Innocent seventeen-year-old Franz leaves his lakeside village to be apprenticed to a wise old Viennese tobacconist. It is 1937, with Hitler on the rise. Franz grows into manhood struggling with city life, nostalgia and a disastrous love affair - helped by (fictionalised!) Freud in exchange for cigars - with the evil of Naziism creeping, horrifically, ever closer, ending with his one glorious, doomed act of rebellion. Often painfully funny, often touching, always deeply engaging.
(Annabel Bedini - bwl 85 Summer 2017 ) |
