Susan Doering

Marjorie Perloff’s memoir traces her life from a well-to-do childhood in Vienna at the heart of an assimilated, intellectual Jewish family, via their flight in 1938 to the United States, to her absorption into American society and culture, and ends with her more than respectable career as Professor of Comparative Literature and eminent literary critic.

The “Mazzesinsel” is not really an island, more a mini-peninsula bulging rather than jutting into the Danube Canal from the north, part of Vienna’s 2nd District.

Culturally, though, it was an island for several centuries, populated almost exclusively, if not entirely voluntarily, by the Jewish population of Vienna. It was, of course, also the site for the ghetto under the Nazi occupation.

I have nothing but praise for those police in Vienna with whom I have had dealings throughout nearly 30 years of residence here.

The time I ran out of petrol (yes, I know…!!!) on the Tangente (the ring road round Vienna) and just managed to roll outside the tunnel, the patrol who just happened to be passing and stopped to help a borderline hysterical young woman were polite and practical. I received no word of reproach and if they did think “women drivers!” they didn’t say it. They took me to a petrol station to get a can of petrol and back to the car, where they helped me pour it into the tank, wished me well and sped on their way in true knights-in-shining-armour style.

The overwhelming, Oscar-promoted success of The Reader (Der Vorleser) came as no real surprise to those who had read Bernhard Schlink’s remarkable novel, either in its German original or in any one of the 39 languages into which it has been translated. Published in 1995, it attained proverbial overnight-acclaim, winning the WELT Prize for Literature, awarded by the prestigious German newspaper Die Welt, and several other international book awards.

A new film version of Thomas Mann’s first full-length novel may seem to be just another attempt at jumping on the bandwagon of a great historical novel in period costume.