Gregor von Rezzori

A new translation of a renowned, hilarious, and cautionary satire of life in upper-class Berlin shortly before World War II follows the social-climbing career of young Traugott von Jassilkowski as he attempts to conquer the German aristocracy.

The elusive narrator of this beautifully written, complex, and powerfully disconcerting novel is the scion of a decayed aristocratic family from the farther reaches of the defunct Austro-Hungarian Empire. In five psychologically fraught episodes, he revisits his past, from adolescence to middle age, a period that …