Product Description

Honeymooners Viktor and Liesel Landauer are filled with the optimism and cultural vibrancy of central Europe of the 1920s when they meet modernist architect Rainer von Abt. He builds for them a home to embody their exuberant faith in the future, and the Landauer House becomes an instant masterpiece.  Viktor and Liesel, a rich Jewish mogul married to a thoughtful, modern gentile, pour all of their hopes for their marriage and budding family into their stunning new home, filling it with children, friends, and a generation of artists and thinkers eager to abandon old-world European style in favor of the new and the avant-garde. But as life intervenes, their new home also brings out their most passionate desires and darkest secrets. As Viktor searches for a warmer, less challenging comfort in the arms of another woman, and Liesel turns to her wild, mischievous friend Hana for excitement, the marriage begins to show signs of strain. The radiant honesty and idealism of 1930 quickly evaporate beneath the storm clouds of World War II. As Nazi troops enter the country, the family must leave their old life behind and attempt to escape to America before Viktor's Jewish roots draw Nazi attention, and before the family itself dissolves.

As the Landauers struggle for survival abroad, their home slips from hand to hand, from Czech to Nazi to Soviet possession and finally back to the Czechoslovak state, with new inhabitants always falling under the fervent and unrelenting influence of the Glass Room. Its crystalline perfection exerts a gravitational pull on those who know it, inspiring them, freeing them, calling them back, until the Landauers themselves are finally drawn home to where their story began.

Brimming with barely contained passion and cruelty, the precision of science, the wild variance of lust, the catharsis of confession, and the fear of failure - the Glass Room contains it all.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #750 in Books
• Published on: 2009-10-20
• Released on: 2009-10-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781590513965
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From The Washington Post
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by by Ron Charles During the pause between world wars, a Jewish businessman and his new wife commissioned a startlingly modern house for themselves in Czechoslovakia. They hired the German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and gave him free rein to design an avant-garde structure that looks like a Mondrian painting in three dimensions: a long, low building of dramatic straight lines, marked by a large room with floor-to-ceiling glass walls. Unbelievably, this elegant house survived the dismemberment of the First Republic of Czechoslovakia, German bombing, Soviet invasion and the natural forces that conspire against a neglected building. The Villa Tugendhat, which has been a public museum since the mid-1990s, remains a masterpiece of minimalist architecture, and now it's the evocative setting for a stirring new novel that almost won this year's Booker Prize. The author, Simon Mawer, moves through six decades of European history, much of it unspeakably tragic, using the glass house as a window on the hopes and fears of its various inhabitants and the conflicts that rip Europe apart. Pianists and Nazis, doctors and servants, everyone is drawn to the living room's extraordinary vista and feels aroused by the promise of such clarity: This is "a place of balance and reason," Mawer writes, "an ageless place held in a rectilinear frame that handles light like a substance and volume like a tangible material and denies the very existence of time." But the architecture proves purer than the human spirit. Again and again, the residents of this glass house find they can't tolerate the light of full disclosure even as they're attracted to it. Mawer has recast the original owner of the house as a sophisticated automobile magnate named Viktor Landauer. An idealist determined to throw off the trappings of religion, aristocracy and nationalism, he's prone to grand slogans about the future and eager to enlist a mesmerizing young architect from Germany, "a poet of space and structure" who shares his sense of the exciting new world. "Ever since Man came out of the cave he has been building caves around him," Mies tells Viktor. "But I wish to take Man out of the cave and float him in the air. I wish to give him a glass space to inhabit." Viktor finds these ideas captivating, no matter how expensive. This is the "dream that went with the spirit of a brand new country in which they found themselves," he thinks, "a state in which being Czech or German or Jew would not matter, in which democracy would prevail and art and science would combine to bring happiness to all people." Mawer spreads the dramatic irony pretty thick here in the first part of the novel. With trouble already smoldering in Germany, two or three toasts to the gloriously peaceful future would have been plenty. Fortunately, he's more interesting and subtle in bringing out the small, private ways in which these characters fail to live up to their ideals. The Landauers' glass house has the effect "of liberating people from the strictures and conventions of the ordinary, of making them transparent," but that turns out to be a Foucauldian nightmare, more problematic than anyone realizes. Honestly, could you live in a place "where there will be no secrets"? While the architect insists his clients don't need walls, Viktor discovers that, in fact, parts of his life must remain cloistered. His wife, Liesel, announces to a curious public that "living inside a work of art is an experience of sublime delight," but she doesn't know what Viktor is doing in the back streets of Vienna. And soon their happy marriage becomes a kind of stage performance, free for all to see but deeply deceptive. "The Glass Room" works so effectively because Mawer embeds these provocative aesthetic and moral issues in a war-torn adventure story that's eerily erotic and tremendously exciting. No matter how transparent and luminescent their architecture, the Landauers still ride the murky currents of history. The house endures, "plain, balanced, perfect; and indifferent," but the family is swept aside by the battles that tear through Czechoslovakia. In the second half of the novel, Mawer rotates several different casts through the Landauers' home, using the glass room to examine people entirely unlike the original owners. In one of the most chilling sections, a German geneticist sets up his laboratory in the abandoned house and hopes the light of science will confirm Hitler's racial propaganda. His work is peaceful -- lots of careful measuring and photographing, "the cool gaze of scientific objectivity" -- but that only renders the whole enterprise more obscene. And like everyone else who lives in this glass room, he finds that such bright exposure makes him more determined to conceal the darkest aspects of his life. Mawer, an Englishman living in Italy, has written this novel as though it were a translation, endowing his prose with a patina of Old World formality that sounds all the more romantic. He claims he doesn't know Czech or German, but his characters speak both fluently, and his attention to foreign languages enriches every episode. These are, after all, people caught in the violent confluence of political upheaval; choosing to speak Czech or German or English becomes a matter of resistance or collusion or hope. And at crucial moments, certain foreign words illuminate the story in poignant ways, as when a Czech resident of the Landauers' old house realizes that "the word he used for room, pokoj, can also mean peace, tranquillity, quiet. So when he said 'the glass room' he was also saying 'the glass tranquillity.' " In chapter after chapter, era after era, the house miraculously continues, working as a talisman, "its spirit of transparency percolating the human beings who stand within it, rendering them as translucent as the glass itself." Like this gorgeous novel, that's an irresistible promise, though far more troubling than it first appears. charlesr@washpost.com
Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Review
PRAISE FOR SWIMMING TO ITHACA ** 'The Cypriot narrative blooms with life, a certain intrigue and some sharply drawn characters' INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY ** 'Conjures up a 1950s world of carob trees, cocktails and rebellion' THE TIMES ** 'A gripping read' SUNDAY TIMES

Review
Named one of the 2009 Books of the Year by The Economist

“A stirring new novel that almost won this year’s Booker Prize….The Glass Room works so effectively because Mawer embeds...provocative aesthetic and moral issues in a war-torn adventure story that’s eerily erotic and tremendously exciting....[a] gorgeous novel.”—The Washington Post

"[The Glass Room is] a thing of extraordinary beauty and symmetry... a novel of ideas, yet strongly propelled by plot and characterised by an almost dreamlike simplicity of telling. Comparisons with the work of Michael Frayn would not be misplaced, and there are occasional moments of illuminating brilliance..." – The Guardian

"In Mawer's hands [The Glass Room] becomes a means for exploring the way people's hopes for the future become part of their history. This he does beautifully." – Times Literary Supplement

"...Mawer creates a passionately detailed portrait of individuals struggling to snatch order and happiness from frightening, irrational times." – Sunday Telegraph

"... engrossing... Mawer explores his themes with a subtle intelligence. A novel of ideas, but one driven by character and story." – The Literary Review

"The Jewish fates of Viktor, Kata and others are lightly handled, which seems just right in this optimistic, joyful but never facile vision of human achievement. Mawer's perfect pacing clinches a wholly enjoyable and moving read." – The Independent

"The writing, as sensual and sophisticated as its subjects, keeps us firmly within the house's elegant parameters, caught up in the touch and taste and roiling emotions of the characters living through these events. Seeing clearly, Mawer shows us, is never an option, no matter how large and expensive your windows. Every era thinks it has achieved transparency, complete with modern fixtures and sundry decorations. But we can't ever actually see out, because our damned humanity keeps misting up the glass." – Time Out London

"The Glass Room['s] poetic success is to remind us of two great gilt-edged ironies: that whatever is held to be the height of modernity is already en route to the museum, and that even 'cold' art is the embodiment of its maker's passion - one that can prove contagious." – The Financial Times

"Simon Mawer's grasp of period and place achieves what all great novels must: the creation of an utterly absorbing world the reader can scarcely bear to leave. Exciting, profoundly affecting and altogether wonderful." – Daily Mail

"… a carefully constructed book, beautifully written" – The Economist

Customer Reviews

A near-perfect novel of architecture, art and love
The Glass Room is a novel about a house, a real and remarkable one, although the story and characters are fictional. It begins with the return of Liesel Landauer, now elderly and blind, to the house that she, a gentile, shared with her husband Viktor, a prosperous Jewish manufacturer of fine automobiles. The Landauer House, which sits on a hill overlooking the Czechoslovakian city of Msto, was designed for the young couple by a famous Viennese architect in the 1920s, and was a classic work of modern design. The centerpiece of the house is the Glass Room, which has large plate glass windows and is partitioned by a wall made of onyx that changes in appearance with the position of the sun. Mawer describes the Glass Room early in the book, as the Landauers see it for the first time:

"It had become a palace of light, light bouncing off the chrome pillars, light refulgent on the walls, light glistening on the dew in the garden, light reverberating from the glass. It as though they stood inside a crystal of salt."

The Glass Room becomes a place where anything and everything is possible, as previous structural and cultural restraints are lifted. The wealthy and sophisticated couple embrace their new home to the fullest, using it frequently to host friends and business colleagues. Liesel's best friend, Hana, a irreverent, beautiful and sexually hungry married woman, is a frequent visitor who provides vitality and spark to the setting.

However, changes are occurring in Europe that darken and threaten the couple's idyllic existence. Hitler's national socialism spreads through and beyond nearby Germany, and the livelihood of Jews in Czechoslovakia becomes slowly but progressively more difficult. The Landauers initially ignore the warnings, as their wealth and influence insulate them from the growing menace. The couple agrees to take in a young woman who has been forced to flee from Vienna, a woman who is well known to Viktor. Finally the couple decides to flee their beloved house and country, but by the time they decide to do so, the Germans have already occupied Czechoslovakia. Hana and her Jewish husband, however, decide to stay in Msto.

The novel then alternates between the lives of the Landauers and the new occupants, leading up to Liesel's eventual return to the Landauer House.

This was a brilliant and near-perfect novel that covers Europe before and during World War II and the subsequent decline in European culture, and includes rich descriptions of architecture, art and music. Love, infidelity and devotion are infused throughout the book, but ultimately the main story and character is the Landauer House with its Glass Room, and the effects it has on its inhabitants and visitors.

I suppose the highest praise I could give this novel is that I would like to start reading it again from the beginning. It is easily the best of the 2009 Booker Prize longlisted books I've read so far, and would be a deserving winner of the award, in my opinion.

Glass walls let in both light and darkness
The author tells us in a Note at the beginning of this novel that the beautiful modern house that contains the Glass Room is not fictional. Here called the Landauer House in Mesto, it is in fact the Villa Tugendhat in Brno, completed in 1930; and, excellent and faithful though the descriptions of it are, some readers may like to look at Google Images to see what the exterior and the interior actually looked like. They can also ascertain that the real name of the architect, here called Rainer von Abt, was Mies van der Rohe, and the real owners of the house were Fritz Tugendhat (a textile magnate) and his wife Greta, who were BOTH Jewish: in the novel only the husband (Viktor) is Jewish, his wife (Liesel) is not. Well, we have been told in the Note that most of the characters in the novel are fictional, but that some of them are not. So, for instance, one member of Victor's circle is the armaments manufacturer Fritz Mandel who really existed (a converted Viennese Jew who nevertheless had close contacts with the Italian fascists and German Nazis), and Mandl was really married for a time to Eva Kiesler, better known as the sensational film star Hedy Lamarr, who in this novel is said to have had a brief lesbian relationship with Liesl closest friend, Hana Hanacova. When the Nazis confiscated the Villa Tugendhat, they rented it out to the aircraft manufacturer Walter Messerschmidt. This does happen in the book, but before that, the novel has the villa used as a Eugenics Research Centre, and the people working there are students of Nazi eugenics departments that really existed. Fritz Tugendhat, like Viktor Landauer, did die in 1958; and old Mrs Tugendhat did accept an invitation in 1967 (though in the novel Mawer has Liesel accept the invitation after Dubcek had become General Secretary in January 1968 and makes the actual visit take place after Dubcek's fall, which was in August 1968). I am unfortunately always troubled by such 'poetic licence', by wondering what is fact and what is fiction - not that that detracts in any way from the considerable quality of the novel.

The cultural and political situations described in the book are real enough: the clash between tradition and modernity, the growing tension between Germans and Czechs in Czechoslovakia, the rising menace of Nazi Germany, the refugees pouring into Czechoslovakia after the Anschluss; then the German occupation; then the Russians arrive (a vivid chapter), and they did in fact stable their horses in the Villa Tugendhat. The novel then slightly conflates what happened to the Villa under communist rule: it first became a dance studio and then a rehabilitation centre for crippled children. Finally it becomes a piece of architectural heritage.

Whether fictional or not, the characters and the relationships between them are well drawn. There is especially the uninhibited Hana, Liesel's best friend. Liesel, for all her modern cultural tastes, is much more conventional, though she manages to accommodate herself somehow to live in a menage a trois. When the Nazis take over Czechoslovakia in 1938, the Landauers (like the Tugendhats) emigrate (but to Switzerland and the United States, whereas the Tugendhats went to Venezuela), with a particularly heart-wrenching episode in the process. In the later sections of the book some situations of the earlier part repeat themselves, like variations on a theme: music, like architecture, plays a considerable part in the novel. And the very end is deeply moving.

The Glass Room, at the centre of the novel has seen so much: political changes have washed through it; much suffering; complicated human relationships; many erotic episodes; confessions. It is redolent with symbolism, some of it elusive. It stands for clarity, light, purity, reason, and harmony, and as such has a hard time surviving in an age of unreason, corruption, darkness and disharmony. But survive it does.

As in his earlier 'The Gospel of Judas' (see my review), Mawer loves using foreign words where English words would do ('Hakenkreuz' for 'swastika', for example - and I did come across two small mistakes in his German). True, sometimes there is no good English equivalent: he rightly says in a postscript that the word 'Raum' has resonances which the word 'room' does not. But this novel is much better and much freer of cliches than that earlier one, and richly deserved to be a contender for the Man-Booker Prize.

Wow. This book packs a punch.
This book has some emotional heft. It is centered around "Landauer House", which is based on Villa Tugendhat in what is now the Czech Republic; however, the real story is about what happened to people in that area during the Nazi rise to power and World War II.

In the book, the ultra- modern house was built to symbolize a new beginning for the fledgling country of Czechoslovakia and its inhabitants. However, the beginning was to very quickly come to an end for the Landauer family and those around them. The book follows the Landauers as the house is built, while they live in the home, and after they must flee Czechoslovakia when the Germans invade.

The characters are very nuanced and complex, while the house itself is built be transparent and stark. One of the wonderful juxtapositions of the books is when, during WWII, a Nazi scientist uses the home as a laboratory to try and classify people by their race (ie Jew vs. Aryan) using physical characteristics. He finds the task impossible to accomplish. This seemed to me to be an over-arching theme of the book, given that the Landauers themselves were from many different backgrounds, spoke several languages, and didn't appear to be allied with any philosophy other than progress.

To me this book was all about gray areas and the inability to classify people into neat categories, as well as the danger in attempting to do so. Somehow, with everything else going on in the book, the author also managed to provide a tapestry of sexuality that deeply humanizes the characters.

I found this book to be extremely moving, and far from a usual treatment of the WWII era in Europe.