This book was the reading group choice for July. I had taken it on holiday, and felt I had a duty to read for the group rather than a desire to, from reading the blurb.

How true is it never to judge a book by it's cover?

I loved this book. It was centred around a very modern house built in the 1920's in Czechoslovakia. How the house was commissioned, the part it played in the lives of the owners, and how they subsequently had to abandon it due to the onset of German occupation of Czechoslovakia and the persecution of the jews.

The story follows the lives of the owners, but also the role of the house, without them. It is occupied by a Nazi division who use it as a laboratory in the early phase of WWII. It then becomes a haven for Russian liberation troops. After the war it is used as an annexe to the local hospital for rehabilitation of children.

The lives of the people linked to the house is very well portrayed, there are many affairs and near affairs. It documents the struggles and hardships families had to endure to survive being displaced.

The house is based on a real building Villa Tugendhat, Brno in The Czech Republic, and after reading the book I spent a good hour looking through the site at photographs of the house. The author had used a lot of factual details about the house in the novel. There were obvious parallels between the historical facts and his fiction too. It was fascinating comparing the two. The house is now undergoing a huge restoration programme and will once again be open to the public on completion.