Vienna

Eva Menasse

From the very beginning - the birth of the narrator's father in the middle of
a bridge party - the reader is plunged headlong into the world of Vienna, a
novel crowded with voices, characters, tragedy and joy.
The disintegration of history and indentity in the twentieth century is seen
through the adventures of one family - half-Jewish Viennese, split apart by
the Nazi invasion and sent out into the world. Dispensing with linear
narrative, the story loops forwards and back to follow each member on
their winding course. Their experiences encompass fraudsters,
footballers, fools and fur coats as the narrative moves from Austria to
London, from Canada to the battlefields of Burma.
This is a landmark European novel of impressive reach and power whose
readership will spread as widely as the family whose story it tells. It
introduces in Eva Menasse an intimate chronicle of human experience
and an unashamedly gleeful storyteller. Her cast of entrancing characters
and unexpected events shows us imperceptibly the formation and
disintegration of family history and identity.