With this stunning debut novel, John Wray leaps onto the literary stage fully mature, with a book so polished and assured that lovers of great writing will be celebrating this book for a long time. Wray shows no uncertainty. He has total control of his dramatic raw material–the rise of the Nazis in Austria, the Dollfuss Affair, and the Anschluss–and he never once stoops to sensationalism, never pushes any of those easy anti-Hitler buttons, never loses his characters in the intensity of the action, and never lets us forget that Hitler’s rise was possible because ordinary people allowed it to happen.
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Concentrating on just ten months of Viennese history between July, 1888, and May, 1889, Morton dissects the life of Vienna vertically, revealing its brilliance and its contrasts–its magnificence but ineffable sadness, its political gamesmanship but resistance to social change, its “correctness” of behavior but its anti-Semitism, and its patronage of the arts and sciences but its refusal to acknowledge true originality. He carefully selects details with which the modern reader can identify to create a full picture, both of the historical characters and the constricted settings in which they try to live and breathe. Focusing on Crown Prince Rudolf as romantic hero, liberal thinker, and sensitive social reformer, Morton selects details which show Rudolf’s resentment of his figurehead position, his lack of power to effect change, and his fears for the future of the monarchy.
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Focusing on just two climactic years, 1913 – 1914, Frederic Morton recreates Vienna in all its splendor during the last days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The vibrant social, intellectual, and cultural life of Vienna is examined within the context of the seething nationalism of the Balkans, the Machiavellian intrigue among the political rulers of the European nations and Russia, and the human frailties of the seemingly larger-than-life national leaders, which assure that the twilight of the empire will eventually be overtaken by darkness.
Rigorously selective in his choice of detail, Morton brings to life the varied activities of a broad cross-section of Viennese society, and reproduces the intellectual milieu which eventually leads to the rise of some of the most influential leaders of the twentieth century–Trotsky, Stalin, Adler, Freud, Jung, Lenin, Hitler, Tito, and a host of others, all of whom are part of Vienna life.
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This is a masterpiece to be savored, celebrated, and shared. Straddling the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, The Radetzky March, published in 1932 by Austrian novelist Joseph Roth, uniquely combines the color, pomp, pageantry, roth radetzky marchand military maneuvering of the last days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire with the more modern political and psychological insights of the twentieth century, giving this short book a panoramic geographical and historical scope with fully rounded characters with whom the reader can empathize.
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Written originally as the outline for the screenplay of the famous 1949 film of the same name, Greene sets the story in Vienna just after World War II, employing the sectors established by the conquering British, Americans, French, and Russians to provide tension, mystery, and an almost palpable aura of menace as residents and visitors alike must deal with four different governments, four sets of officials, and four collections of laws as they move throughout the city. With massive bomb damage, the city is still emerging from devastation. Rollo Martins, the author of cowboy novels written under the name of Buck Dexter, arrives in Vienna to visit an old school friend, Harry Lime, only to find that he has arrived on the day of Lime’s funeral. Investigating Lime’s death, Martins learns that a neighbor saw the traffic accident that killed Lime and observed three men carrying Lime’s body from the scene. Only two of those men have been identified–the third man has vanished.
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