Nigel Jones
A Pearl Before Swine
The Setting of the Pearl: Vienna under Hitler
By Thomas Weyr
Oxford University Press 352pp £18.50
There's something odd about Vienna and the Austrians. Don't just take my word for it – read virtually every English-language writer who has puzzled over the place and its people since the War. Graham Greene, Jan Morris, John Irving, Stephen Brook, Frederic Morton, Hella Pick, even the grand-daddy of Austrophile Englishmen, Gordon Brook-Shepherd, who devoted his life to the subject – all have concluded that all is, ahem, not quite right with the denizens of the Danubian lands, charming and gifted as many of them doubtless are. Now yet another author, Thomas Weyr, emerges from a fruitless battle to get to grips with this baffling, infuriating problem and confesses himself – in a tone of hurt, almost wounded, wonder – as defeated as those who went before him.
Weyr's central subject is a curiously neglected one: the history of the Austrian capital from its forced, though not unwilling, amalgamation with Hitler's Germany in the Anschluss of March 1938 to its occupation by the Red Army in 1945, a ruined city. This core is sandwiched between chapters looking back
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
Knowledge of Sufism increased markedly with the publication in 1964 of The Sufis, by Idries Shah. Nowadays his writings, much like his father’s, are dismissed for their Orientalism and inaccuracy.
@fitzmorrissey investigates who the Shahs really were.
Fitzroy Morrissey - Sufism Goes West
Fitzroy Morrissey: Sufism Goes West - Empire’s Son, Empire’s Orphan: The Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah by Nile Green
literaryreview.co.uk
Rats have plagued cities for centuries. But in Baltimore, researchers alighted on one surprising solution to the problem of rat infestation: more rats.
@WillWiles looks at what lessons can be learned from rat ecosystems – for both rats and humans.
Will Wiles - Puss Gets the Boot
Will Wiles: Puss Gets the Boot - Rat City: Overcrowding and Urban Derangement in the Rodent Universes of John B ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Twisters features destructive tempests and blockbuster action sequences.
@JonathanRomney asks what the real danger is in Lee Isaac Chung's disaster movie.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/eyes-of-the-storm