The Ghosts of Vienna

"You shouldn't have made me so conscious of it", Lisa shouts at her boss. But the entire city of New York will not let these Jewish emigrants from the Old World forget that, even years after their exodus, they still do not belong and never really will. Lisa's brother Carl, too, dreams of Viennese coffee-houses while wending his way among throngs of pedestrians through New York's sky-scraper canyons. The former writer, descendant of the haute bourgeoisie, now works as an errand-boy supporting his old mother who has retreated completely into her world, forever insisting that "at home it was different". Adolf Placzek, born 87 years ago in Vienna and exiled in 1939, lives today in New York and is regarded as the grand old man of American architectural history. The ghosts of Vienna, the feeling of alienation that never vanishes despite gradual assimilation, have haunted him all his life – and are vividly portrayed in masterful narrative that turns personal experience into literature.