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.
關於作者:
Simon Mawer was born in 1948 in England, and spent his
childhood there, in Cyprus and in Malta. He has lived with his wife
in Italy for more than 20 years, and he teaches at the English
School in Rome.