Good Living Street: The Fortunes of My Viennese Family

(Paperback)

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Description

In 1900 Vienna was one of the most exciting places to live in the world. Its glamorous high society was the envy of Europe, and it was the centre of an exploding arts movement that set the tone for the following century. Tim Bonyhady's great-grandparents were leading patrons of the arts in fin de siecle Vienna: Gustav Klimt painted his great-grandmother's portrait, and the family knew many of the city's leading cultural figures. In Good Living Street he follows the lives of three generations of women in his family in an intimate account of fraught relationships, romance, and business highs and lows. They enjoyed a lifestyle of luxury and privilege - until everything changed for families of Jewish origin like his. In 1938, his family fled Vienna for a small flat in a harbourside suburb of Sydney, taking with them the best private collection of art and design to escape the Nazis.

Reviews

A glittering family saga of privilege and tragedy. * Sunday Telegraph *
This is a deeply affecting portrait of a family and the way that memory is held through objects and art. It is a remarkable book. -- Edmund de Waal, author of THE HARE WITH AMBER EYES
So rich in texture, so full of artistic and visual detail, that a whole lost central European world, and particularly its art, architecture and music, comes alive on the page. * The Spectator *
Rich and enthralling -- Alexander Waugh
A captivating tour-de-force. * Art Monthly *
tells a riveting three-generational family story without sentimentality that, because of the meticulousness of the research, displays a whole society to us, with habits, lifestyles, attitudes and aspirations so different from ours... It is essentially an essay on the human spirit, with all its angularities and complexities. * Australian Book Review *

Author Bio

Tim Bonyhady is a cultural historian and environmental lawyer at the Australian National University. His many books include the prize-winning The Colonial Earth.