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The Glass Room

Simon Mawer

Start date: December 1, 2022

Finish date: February 28, 2023

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Oct 14, 2022 Elizabeth (Alaska) rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 5-star-reads, twenty-first-century, zz2022-acquisitions, kindle

One of my Goodreads friends leads his review commenting This book is unusual in that its central character is a building rather than a person .... The Glass Room is a real place, the human characters almost entirely fictional. (Just 'almost' because there are a very few historical persons.) The real house is the Villa Tugendhat in Brno, Czech Republic. It has since become a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Viktor and Liesel Landauer live in Město, pronounced Mnyesto, which in Czech means "city". It is ...more

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Jun 09, 2015 Maia rated it liked it

The first chapter is genius and has to be read. Certain chapters - the house itself as a character particularly - have to be read. Full marks for not pretending to know what the holocaust felt like: has characters as millionaires able to escape. Seamstress character very good. If you'd like to see the house, it really exists: but you have to book far in advance, apparently. It's in Brno. Friend's sister did an internship there, apparently it's ugly, cheap and connected by fast rail links to all ...more

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Nov 22, 2020 Kathleen (itpdx) rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Lovely. Lyrical. Mawer gives us a domestic drama, both in the sense that the main character is a house and that the tale is about the family that has it built. The story starts post WWI and continues through WWII and beyond. As historic fiction, it is interesting to see the newly created Czechoslovakia trying to find itself post-Hapsburg. Mawer’s language is lovely. He does stretch credulity a bit trying to tie up loose ends by setting them in the house.

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