THE LOST CITY

by John Gunther ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 9, 1964

John Gunther has gone ""inside"" again, although his novel of an American journalist's Vienna in the early thirties differs little from one of his documentaries, thereby differing more from the novel's other demands. In the Cafe Weissenhof, Mason Jarrett, correspondent for the Chicago Star, picks up much of his expert information on the events presaging the Central European holocaust that culminated in World War II. He also absorbs a good deal of the Gemutlichkeit of the fading Viennese society of the time. Alone with episodes in the personal lives of many of his reporter friends and his own marital and extramarital involvements, Jarrett (and Gunther) present in detail the political and economic stepping stones to war: the Customs Union pact between Austria and Germany; the reorganization and failure of the powerful A.O.G. bank; the rise of Nazi Socialism and the attendant upheaval. It was a crucial period in contemporary history that reserves such documentation. Less perhaps can be said of the fictional situation which is an insistent reminder of other novel-cum-nostalgia shades from the Vienna Woods of that time. Or the minor characters whose complicated roles are hurriedly resolved in an expansive reminiscence at the end of the book when Jarrett is sixty, a novelist who has been living in Monterey for the past twenty years... The Lost City can be best read as a straightforward Inside Vienna and its selection by the Literary Guild will give it a visa to a popular market. It reads- and it will be read.

Pub Date: Sept. 9, 1964

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harper & Row

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1964

Categories: FICTION