Just finished this , my first Simon Mawer book. Quite
interesting to base both the house and characters on real places and
people. And then change the names of the main characters to
fictionalise the narrative.

Based on the Tugendhat House in Brno, by Mies van der Rohe, and
widely considered his European masterpiece, prior to his fleeing
to the US in 1938. (As did his patron by necessity, Fritz Tugendhat
in real life, Mawer's fictional Viktor Landauer).
The book describes a wealthy Jewish industrialist who
has commisioned a famous Modernist architect to build his family
a home in the fictional Czech city of Mesto in the late 1920's.

Through the ensuing years of the 1930,s the inevitability of war
threatens the cultured Landauer family's way of life. And
these tumultuous outside events run concurrent with the
disintegration of a loveless marriage.

This culminates in the family abandoning everything to escape. As
the German annexation of the Czechoslovak state ensures that as
Jews, the family has no option but to flee the imminent arrival of
the Nazi's.


However, I found some of the storyline a tad far fetched in places
for my taste, and was clutching just to " go with it " at times.
More sex than a Bond novel, a lot of it just plainly irrelevant and
contrived.

Some of Mawer's narrative was also just ever so slightly rather
pretentious in places as well, in my opinion... " pusillanimous "
Yeah right, Simon...
" Caprice" and "capriciousness" somewhat favoured, also.

That aside, the book did capture the loss and desperation caused
by the Nazi annexation of Czechoslovakia. And the double tragedy
of Eastern Europe being " liberated " from the Germans, only to find
themselves under a totalitarian Soviet Socialist regime instead.

The irony of history, is not lost here.

In summary, a worthwhile read. Especially if you have an
interest in the Modernist architects and architecture of the early
part of the 20th Century.The house really is the star. The
Glass Room of the title, in particular.