Glass Room by Simon Mawer
The book tells the story of a house set high on a Czechoslovak hill, the Landauer House shines as a wonder of steel and glass and onyx built specially for newly-weds Viktor and Liesel Landauer , a Jew married to a gentile. But the radiant honesty of 1930 that the house, with its unique Glass Room, seems to engender quickly tarnishes as the storm clouds of WW2 gather, and eventually the family must flee, accompanied by Viktor's lover and her child.
But the house's story is far from over, and as it passes from hand to hand, from Czech to Russian, both the best and the worst of the history of Eastern Europe becomes somehow embodied and perhaps emboldened within the beautiful and austere surfaces and planes so carefully designed, until events become full-circle.
This house is based on a real house which you can visit today, it is the Tugendhat House in Brno Chechoslovakia
The Group really responded to this book, the many historical layers and the interesting characters in each period and yet the thread of the original owners remains throughout the book. One might quibble that the ending is an little pat but overall it is a book that is well worth reading.
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