Available in English for the first time, here is David Vogel's previously unknown novel that had literary Israel abuzz when it was published in 2012, almost one hundred years after the author started working on it.
Literary Israel was abuzz when the untitled manuscript of this previously unknown novel was discovered in 2010 in the Vogel archives in Tel Aviv. Experts have since come to believe that David Vogel began working on it between 1912 and 1925 in Vienna, and continued later in Paris. Although Vogel wrote in Hebrew, he lived most of his adult life in Vienna and Paris; he was essentially a central European author, belonging to the group that included Stefan Zweig, Arthur Schnitzler, Franz Werfel, and Joseph Roth. Like Married Life, which established Vogel as a major writer, Viennese Romance reflects the obsessive-destructive loves and the pervasive decadence of the time.
‘Set in gorgeous, lilac-scented 1900s Vienna … [Viennese Romance]
is the story of penniless chanced Michael (18) up from the country
and determined to "plumb the depths of life in all its shades" …
you are left with an indelible impression of Vanished Vienna with
its Strauss waltzes, flower gardens and sumptuous ballrooms.’
*Daily Mail*
‘What a wonderful novel it is. Brave and bold in content, with
erotic scenes and a sensational love triangle at its hub, it is
written in Vogel's distinctive style, through which he probes his
characters' souls and skillfully sculpts their physical attributes.
There is Vogel's trademark investigation of the lineaments of
passion and, as always, his fear of passion's institutionalization.
The author's love of the city's frenetic pace shines through, along
with the remnants of spirituality that are crushed amid the gears
of the modern machine.’
*Haaretz*
‘A treasure trove of fiery temperament — uninflated, direct, and
exciting — by a real Hebrew artist.’
*Haaretz*
‘Viennese Romance is a seminal addition to the secular Hebrew
canon, providing vital insight into the history of the Jewish
diaspora. Along with its author, it must not be forgotten.’
*Readings*
‘In some ways, Vogel is like an early Woody Allen … he was
introverted, consumed with sexual hang-ups, and lived as a
perpetual outsider.’
*Tablet Magazine*
‘[Viennese Romance's] own history is as fascinating as that which
it evokes. Written over several decades between Vienna and Paris,
it swings between cosmopolitanism and philosophical enquiry … This
is the Vienna of Freud, Arthur Schnitzler and Otto Weininger; its
fin de siècle sexual consciousness more risqué than other Western
cities.’
*The Melbourne Review*
‘There is an unmistakable mastery in the hyperaesthetic intensity
with which Vogel depicts early 20th-century Vienna’s mix of squalor
and sophistication, and in the volatile blend of sensuality and
despair that haunts his narrative.’
*The Telegraph, UK*
‘Speaking through his philosophical young protagonist, Vogel writes
knowingly about life’s emotional extremes, from impregnable joy to
consuming depression … What really amazes is just how current it
feels. Vogel has been compared to Franz Kafka and Thomas Mann, but
Viennese Romance also recalls the poetic melancholy and easily
punctured gaiety of F. Scott Fitzgerald, who wrote during the same
period and whose work still resonates hugely to this day.’
*The Thousands*
‘The romance here is in Rost's vision of Vienna, the cultural
capital of old-world central Europe … This is that exotic, vanished
Austria, the Austria of Freud and Wittgenstein and Emperor Franz
Joseph … Viennese Romance offers insight into the world of a
central figure in 20th-century Jewish writing, and a crucial
pathfinder of a specifically Hebrew literature’
*Weekend Australian*
‘[A] marvellous tale … evocative and insightful.’
*West Australian*
‘Viennese Romance is a very beautiful novel … Like any truly good
literature, Vogel is worth reading over and over.’
*Ynet*
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