Book review: Night Falls in the City by Sarah Gainham

HIGHLY acclaimed when first published in 1967, the work remains a gripping masterpiece of wartime Vienna.

HIGHLY acclaimed when first published in 1967, the work remains a gripping masterpiece of wartime Vienna.

The re-released book is set within the art cultural elite of the Austrian capital from Anschluss to the end of World War II.

Part of the intelligentsia, beautiful actress Julia Homburg and her Jewish politician husband Franz Wedeker, embody the enlightened brilliance of their native city. But when the Nazis take over in 1938, all that changes. Old certainties are replaced by betrayal and suspicion.

This gripping and suspenseful psychological thriller is also a sociological analysis of a city under the stress of a totalitarian regime.

Night Falls On The City
Sarah Gainham
Little, Brown, $29.95