The Strudlhof Steps (Paperback)

Paperback. The first English translation of an essential Austrian novel about life in post-war, mid-century Vienna, as seen through a wide cast of characters, ranging from Prussian aristocrats to bohemians to working-class folk.The first English translation of an essential Austrian novel about life in early-twentieth-century Vienna, as seen through a wide and varied cast of characters.The Strudlhof Steps is an unsurpassed portrait of Vienna in the early twentieth century, a vast novel crowded with characters ranging from an elegant, alcoholic Prussian aristocrat to an innocent ingenue to "respectable" shopkeepers and tireless sexual adventurers, bohemians, grifters, and honest working-class folk. The greatest character in the book, however, is Vienna, which Heimito von Doderer renders as distinctly as James Joyce does Dublin or Alfred D blin does Berlin. Interweaving two time periods, 1908 to 1911 and 1923 to 1925, the novel takes the monumental eponymous outdoor double staircase as a governing metaphor for its characters' intersecting and diverging fates. The Strudlhof Steps is an experimental tour de force with the suspense and surprise of a soap opera. Here Doderer illuminates the darkness of passing years with the dazzling extravagance that is uniquely his. Translation of: Strudlhofstiege oder Melzer und die Tiefe der Jahre. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.…