Vicki Baum

"A grand hotel in the center of 1920s Berlin serves as a microcosm of the modern world in Vicki Baum's celebrated novel, a Weimar-era bestseller that retains all its verve and luster today. Among the guests of the hotel is Dr. Otternschlag, a World War I veteran whose face has been sliced in half by a shell. Day after day he emerges to read the paper in the lobby, discreetly inquiring at the desk if the letter he's been awaiting for years has arrived. Then there is Grusinskaya, a great ballerina now fighting a losing battle not so much against age as against her fear of it, and Gaigern, a sleek professional thief, who may or may not be made for each other. Herr Preysing also checks in, the director of a family firm that isn't as flourishing as it appears, who would never imagine that Kringelein, his underling, a timorous petty clerk he's bullied for years, has also come to Berlin, determined to live at last now that he's received a medical death sentence. All these characters and more, with their secret fears and hopes, come together and come alive in the pages of Baum's delicious and disturbing masterpiece"--

What the book “Love and Death in Bali” from Vicky Baum (1937 ... "Love and Death in Bali" is a 1937 novel by Vicki Baum, set during the 1906 Dutch intervention in Bali, exploring the tragic events of the puputan (mass suicide) and the clash between Balinese culture and Dutch colonial forces. Here's a more detailed overview: Historical Context: The novel is set during the 1906 Dutch intervention in Bali, a period marked by the Battle of Badung, where Balinese people, in a final act of defiance, engaged in mass suicides (puputan) rather than surrender to the Dutch colonial forces. Author: Vicki Baum, the author, was inspired by her own experiences in Bali and her relationship with German painter and musician Walter Spies. Themes: The novel explores themes of love, death, cultural clash, resistance, and the clash between tradition and modernity. Plot: The story follows the lives of ordinary Balinese people as they navigate the challenges of the Dutch invasion and the ensuing conflict, culminating in the puputan. Characters: The novel features complex Balinese characters grappling with cultural demands and the realities of the Dutch occupation. Other Notable Facts Baum had recently stayed in Bali with her friend Walter Spies who supplied her with background for the novel Baum was born in a Jewish family in Vienna, Austria and moved to the United States in 1932 Her books were banned in the Third Reich in 1938 and she started publishing in English She became an American citizen in 1938 and died in Los Angeles, in 1960

Clarinda Driessen und zu der Werra, is young and married by convenience to "poor Albert", a man many years her senior, but Clarinda is an intelligent woman, drowning in a loveless marriage and can count Goethe, no less, between her acquaintances from the culturate crowd and parlors in the city of Weimar. When Felipe, a dashing and misterious Spanish adventurer shows up, sweeping Clarinda off her feet and running away together to Mexico, where he has silver mines, Clarinda finds herself in the middle of Hidalgo's revolution, in a tale of love, lost love and bloody war, always overlook by the headless angel, like our heroin, a beautiful girl of angelic beauty, who loses her head for a love that almost costs her her life.

10 out of 10!!!!

In the turmoil between the World Wars, travelers and refugees from various countries take up residence in a hotel in Shanghai. Their stories converge as each struggles with his own demons.

An anthology of film scenarios written by German exile authors in California in the 1940s. Edited from manuscripts from the estate of Hollywood agent Paul Kohner.