Author

Publication

2009 - Little, Brown, London, England

Language

English

Word Count

101,250 words, Guess

Page Count

405 pages

Identifiers

and 2 more
  • Better World Books9781408700778
  • Open LibraryOL23947500M

Classifications

  • DDC823.914
  • LCCPR9120.9.M38 G53 2009b
  • LCCPR9120.9.M38
and 1 more
  • LCCPR9120.9.M38 G53 2009

Description

On honeymoon in Venice in 1929, Viktor and Liesel Landauer face a new world when they meet brilliant architect Rainer von Abt. Soon, on a hillside near a provincial Czech town, the Landauer House with its celebrated Glass Room will become von Abt's greatest work, a modernist masterpiece in glass and steel, with travertine floors and onyx walls, filled with light and optimism. But while Viktor's beautiful wife is Aryan, he is Jewish, and so when Nazi troops arrive the family must flee. Yet their exile is not the end of the spectacular building. It slips from hand to hand, from Czech to Nazi to Soviet and finally to the Czechoslovak state, the crystalline perfection of the Glass Room always exerting a gravitational pull on those who know it. It becomes a laboratory, a shelter from the storm of war, and a place where the broken and the ruined find some kind of comfort until, with the collapse of Communism, the Landauers can finally return to where their story began.

Subjects

Topics

FictionHistoryDwellingsArchitectsSocial aspectsSocial conditionsModern Architecture

Times

Genres

  • Fiction

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