Gregor von Rezzori

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 …

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.