Max Berman's Jewish family emigrated from Austria to New York a decade before the Nazis took over their country in the Anschluss
. In the years after the war, he becomes a celebrated restoration architect as well as a playboy and self-described "nomad," averse to personal attachments, except to his intensely unhappy mother, Mira. The keeper of the memories of their life in Austria, she hates America and yearns to return to Europe. When she dies, Max travels to his birthplace, a small town known as "H," to reclaim the family house appropriated by the Nazis. As he haggles over the property's title, he befriends Arthur Spitzer, leader of the town's decimated Jewish community, and one of its members, Nadja, an aspiring artist. Over the years, he divides his time between New York and H., and undertakes to chronicle the history of H's Jews. Austrian Mitgutsch (Lover, Traitor
) delivers psychologically acute portraits of individuals struggling to define themselves as part of a larger community, and a penetrating depiction of postwar Austria's unease with its not-so-distant past. (Aug.)
