The Glass Room [Paperback] Mawer, Simon

A modernist villa in 1930s Czechoslovakia becomes the stage for a marriage — luminous at first, then shadowed by history, jealousy, and war. Viktor and Liesel Landauer commission a radical glass-walled house, a cathedral of light and rationality. But as fascism rises and intimacy frays, the house witnesses affairs, betrayals, Nazi occupation, and eventual Soviet control. Mawer's prose is precise and cool, mirroring the architecture itself, while the emotional undercurrents run hot. The Glass Room is less about the people than the space they inhabit — how a building can hold memory, desire, and violence in equal measure. Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, this is architectural fiction at its most assured: cerebral, sensual, and haunting. For readers who love historical novels with a sharp modernist edge.