Books

The Austrian writer's enchanting short stories reveal his love of nature in elegantly simple prose

While the Great Powers wrestled over the fate of the Adriatic city-state of Fiume, its residents had their own sense of who they were, argues historian Dominique K. Reill.

Anne Applebaum introduces us to the elites responsible for democratic backsliding in her new book, Twilight of Democracy.

In The Murder of Professor Schlick, author David Edmonds recreates the compelling history of Vienna’s contributions to scientific philosophy.

Set in the gloaming of the Habsburg Empire, Katja Perat’s ardent debut novel is a fictional coming-of-age memoir from the daughter of the world’s first “masochist."

In Sylvia Petter’s debut novel All the Beautiful Liars, Katrina Klain arrives in Vienna in search of the lost pieces of her life.

Close-knit ties triumph over trauma in Anna Goldenberg’s moving family memoir of torture, exile and ultimate homecoming.

The bestseller by a society caterer and celebrity chef in interwar Vienna was aryanized, her name erased from history. Now, a century later, her granddaughter reveals her story.

Martyn Rady’s new history of the Habsburgs argues that their empire was undone by the very things that once made it mighty.

“The Light that Failed: A Reckoning” by IWM fellow Ivan Krastev and NYU professor Stephen Holmes explains what went wrong with Western liberalism.

Wife, mother, traveler – humble but headstrong Ida Pfeiffer took the world by storm by circumnavigating the globe her way.

In Tyll, widely-acclaimed German-Austrian author Daniel Kehlmann reinvents a medieval legend to unmask the fatuity of rulers and the wisdom of tricks.

Yale professor Frank Snowden’s sweeping analysis of pandemics over the centuries concludes that while science advances, people do not.

Wolfgang Siemann draws on newly discovered notes and letters to paint a more nuanced portrait of diplomat and statesman Klemens von Metternich.

Robert Musil’s epic Austrian classic gets cut down to size to explore love and identity across the boundaries of self.

Yale professor of medical history Frank Snowden’s sweeping analysis of pandemics over the centuries, concludes that while science advances, people do not. An unsettling but gripping read.

In his first foray into cultural criticism, musician Dave Randall calls upon his readers to think outside the jukebox.

Love and Desire, War and Human Suffering in Ingeborg Bachmann’s Malina.

On the 30th anniversary of his death, the Austrian author’s acerbic wit still cuts through the pomposities and pettiness of a society hiding from itself.

Philipp Blom sets out to demonstrate how rapid climate change can dramatically upset our social and economic structures, our everyday lives. It has ha...

The struggle over a rich literary inheritance opens questions of identity regarding the seminal writer, a Czech who was also Jewish but wrote in Germa...

In A Rich Brew, Shachar Pinsker makes a convincing case for the role of cafés in fostering a golden age of Jewish culture. In any guidebook about Vie...

In Éric Vuillard’s award-winning historical novel The Order of the Day, an absurd and tragic encounter seals Austria’s fate. The hour grows late and...

Robert Menasse’s award-winning The Capital is a dark but affectionate satire on the European idea. Robert Menasse has long been preoccupied with th...

BOOK PRESENTATION | From Empire to Republic It’s been 100 years since the Habsburg Empire dissolved into several new, independent republics...

Home Town Media presents From Empire to Republic Thanks for attending the event at Buchhandlung Kuppitsch Schottengasse 4, 1010 Wien In case...

Arno Geiger’s playful and moving memoir "The Old King in his Exile" discovers a world of imagination in his father’s dementia. There are p...

Anna Seghers’ Morality Play Available in English for the first time, The Seventh Cross addresses the damage and deep divisions of ordinary life under...

To Vienna, with Love In Kevin Wignall’s new thriller, Vienna takes the spotlight and steals the show With a name like To Die in Vienna, Kevin ...

In Rebel Modernists, Liane Lefaivre traces 120 years of Viennese design since Otto Wagner. Urban design has a long and distinguished history in Vie...

How the US Army helped preserve the famed Lipizzaners in the final days of WWII. Weeks from the end of the Second World War, a rogue unit of the Amer...

Tim Hadley details just how much the German General Staff knew about the weaknesses of the Austrian-Hungarian army Until German unification in 1871,...

Benjamin Black’s addictive new thriller re-creates an irresistible world of sex and sorcery in 16th century Prague It’s a snowy December 1599 in Pra...

In After Europe, Ivan Krastev argues that the refugee crisis is Europe’s gravest threat Europe is in crisis and Ivan Kras...

70 years later, the Marshall Plan remains a model for foreign aid policy in everybody’s interest. In retrospect, the past seems inevitable. But e...

Edith Sheffer updates the record on the famed Austrian physician to chilling effect As a pioneer of autistic psychopathy, Hans Asperger has a ben...

Maja Haderlap’s debut novel Angel of Oblivion confronts the past in Austria’s borderlands. Austrian writer Maja Haderlap is a farmer’s daughter...

Karl Sigmund’s new book Exact Thinking in Demented Times tells the dramatic history of an intellectual revolution. Sometime around 1900, in the spi...

In Yiza the Austrian author Michael Köhlmeier looks at the refugee crisis from a child’s perspective. Michael Köhlmeier’s startling new novella...

Laura Spinney’s Pale Rider is a portrait of the life and science of the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918. Did you get your flu shot this year? Statisti...

In "Orban: Europe's New Strongman" Paul Lendvai tracks the ambition of the increasingly authoritarian Hungarian prime minister. In politics, symbol...

Andreas Egger lives a life bordering on the vegetative, both figuratively and literally: His dwelling is high above the valley, at the tree ...

The 1920s in Vienna was a time of despair and confusion in a world of lost empire, political upheaval and the trauma of war. ...

Debunking myths of the murder-suicide of Crown Prince Rudolf and his lover You know the story – or, you think you know it. With the scenery coll...

Arthur Schnitzler’s forgotten novella is released in English, in a stylish translation by Alexander Starritt Arthur Schni...

The city likes to claim “Vienna is different.” Now Harald Havas’ new book Weird Vienna proves it Devotees of American pop cul...

The recently published diaries of Sunset Boulevard screenwriter Charles Brackett, on Hollywood and the half-mad world of Viennese émigré director Bill...

Janek Wasserman takes a closer look at conservative discontent in Red Vienna during the interwar period It is the victors who write the history, Win...

Part I: Where to buy new English books in Vienna Finding bookstores that sell English books in Vienna is no problem. Here are a few of our favorites...

Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny is a call to action, demystifying the assaults on contemporary democracy through the lessons of history. Putin, Orbán...

Peter H. Wilson asks us to reimagine the premodern world in The Holy Roman Empire It was neither holy nor Roman nor an empire – or so we learned in sc...

Vicki Baum’s classic international bestseller Grand Hotel: a lucid, affectionate depiction of a society in crisis The Vienna-born novelist Vicki Baum ...

The desire for real things in real time lies deep in the human psyche argues David Sax in The Revenge of Analog. Evenings, after supper, my fathe...

In The Vanquished, Robert Gerwarth attempts a more nuanced look at WW1 and why the carnage didn’t end in 1918. On September 11, 1919, Gabriele D’Ann...

The Tobacconist, a bestselling novel by the award-winning Viennese writer Robert Seethaler, tackles coming of age on the eve of war and shows a sentim...

Richard Harris’ book Rigor Mortis inspires scientific soul-searching. Let’s start out addressing the elephant in the room: There are a lot of sci...

Austrian Michael Köhlmeier’s reinvention of the novel with Idyll with Drowning Dog and Madalyn Michael Köhlmeier is a man of his times. One of the m...

How neoliberalism changed Central Europe in Europe Since 1989 After the fall of Communism, “privatization” was the word of the day, and it seemed al...

In Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany, Norman Ohler shows how methamphetamines made the German Blitzkrieg possible As German Panzers overran France in t...

The story of Stefan Zweig’s exile years is compellingly told in George Prochnik’s literary biography In spite of his fame, Austrian novelist Stefan ...

Two centuries of scandal, intrigue and dancing in Russia are masterfully handled in Simon Morrison’s Bolshoi Confidential In 2013, the headlines abo...

Enjoy the true stories in Elizabeth Greenwood’s Playing Dead, but don’t expect deep insights It all began with a conversation about student loans. Li...

A myth-busting new history of the Habsburg Empire by Pieter M. Judson gives valuable insights on nationalism and identity in Central Europe In June ...

Barry G. Gale brings high-brow rigor to a low-brow subject in Love in Vienna: The Sigmund Freud - Minna Bernays Affair. As Barry G. Gale admits in a...

With schools and universities starting again, Benedict Carey’s How We Learn is the right guide for getting your brain in full swing. Learning is a slo...

Smart cities claim to improve the lives, productivity and eco-balance of their citizens. A new collection of essays questions whether the vision lives...

In seeing the world in all its delicate beauty and overwhelming roughness, Christoph Ransmayr’s Atlas of an Anxious Man finds a language for mapping t...

Doing business with people from different cultural backgrounds can be tricky. Understanding them is the first step to making it work There is an ol...

E-readers may be an innovative, eco-friendly alternative to pulp. But are publishers now looking over your shoulder while you read? Have you hear...

How yesterday’s industrial graveyards are turning into today’s hotbeds of innovation Akron and Albany, Dresden and Eindhoven, Oulo and Portland –...

Eric Weiner traces how time, place, background and clutter figure into the settings where genius is born. What happens when former National Publi...

Understanding requires much more than merely speaking the same language. It’s the culture that matters. In a Viennese café: you’ve found a table,...

Adomnan was born in 524 and in addition to being an Abbot, hagiographer, a keen traveler and the friend of kings, this guy also managed to find time f...

On 300 dense pages the Scottish political economist Mark Blyth delivers a ringing battle cry to change course – or else. With the economy back on...

A new biography by Adam Sisman deciphers the coded life of novelist David Cornwell Duplicity and betrayal are constant themes in the writing of “...

When you ask for a list of books set in Vienna, Graham Green's The Third Man will likely be the first one people suggest. Granted, Green's screenplay,...

A master of the feuilleton, the author’s virtuosity is on full display on every page of this collection of newspaper essays about people and politics ...

With a fascinating cast of characters, Philipp Blom’s engaging history of  the inter-war years stages the glories and agonies of these troubled times....

  Few questions are left unanswered in the pictograms and statistics collected in these two volumes.The second, on Vienna, was just published in...

Peter Vergo’s re-issued "Art in Vienna, 1898-1918," recounts the fitful birth of the Modern In conservative Vienna of the 1890s, culture had ossi...

Anna Porter’s The Ghosts of Europe shows different paths to transition and the continuing identity crisis Nearly three decades after the “velvet”...

David Clay Large’s engaging history: The Grand Spas of Central Europe  In a sense, David Clay Large took a lifetime to write The Grand Spas of Ce...

A chronicle of Hitler’s war in the Alpine borderlands As Europe’s map was redrawn at Potsdam in 1945, Austria was again separated from Germany, a...

Traveler, soldier, linguist, scholar, bon vivant, grand flaneur, Patrick Leigh Fermor was one of the greatest travel writers of the 20th century. Arte...

Elisabeth de Waal’s The Exiles Return depicts the heartbreak of postwar homecoming Elisabeth de Waal is a familiar name to readers of her grandso...