Book description
Cool. Balanced. Modern. The precisions of science, the wild variance of
lust, the catharsis of confession and the fear of failure - these are
things that happen in the Glass Room. High on a Czechoslovak hill, the
Landauer House shines as a wonder of steel and glass and onyx built
specially for newlyweds Viktor and Liesel Landauer, a Jew married to a
gentile. But the radiant honesty of 1930 that the house, with its unique
Glass Room, seems to engender quickly tarnishes as the storm clouds of
WW2 gather, and eventually the family must flee, accompanied by Viktor's
lover and her child. But the house's story is far from over, and as it
passes from hand to hand, from Czech to Russian, both the best and the
worst of the history of Eastern Europe becomes somehow embodied and
perhaps emboldened within the beautiful and austere surfaces and planes
so carefully designed, until events become full-circle. Simon Mawer
was born in 1948 in England, and spent his childhood there, in Cyprus
and in Malta. He now lives with his wife and two children in Italy, and
teaches at the English School in Rome.
