Book Description
Spring, 1938: Café Mozart in the heart of Vienna is beloved by its clientele, including cousins Mathias Kraemer and Johannes Namal. The two writers are as close as brothers. They are also members of Freud’s Circle—a unique group of the famed psychiatrist’s friends and acquaintances who once gathered regularly at the bright and airy café to talk about books and ideas over coffee and pastries. But dark days are looming.
With Hitler’s annexation of Austria, Nazi edicts governing daily life become stricter and more punitive. Now Hitler has demanded that the “hidden Jews” of Vienna be tracked down, and Freud’s Circle has been targeted. The SS aims to use old group photos to identify Jewish intellectuals and subversives. With the vise tightening around them, Mathias and Johannes’s only option appears to be hiding in plain sight, using assumed names and identities to evade detection, aware that discovery would mean consignment to a camp or execution.
Faced with stark and desperate choices, Mathias, Johannes, their families and friends all find their loyalties and courage tested in unimaginable ways. But despite betrayal, heartache and imprisonment, hope remains, and with it, the determination to keep those they love alive, and Mathias and Johannes at the same time discovering that what originally condemned them—their writing—might also be their salvation.
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/62325753-the-vienna-writers-circle
RATING: 5 out of 5 Stars
THE VIENNA WRITERS CIRCLE by J.C. Maetis is an incredibly intense historical fiction that kept me unnerved and on the edge of my seat through most of the book. This book is not for the faint of heart and describes scenes of man’s inhumanity to man is a stark way through the lens of two Jewish thriller writers in Vienna during WWII.
Cousins Mathias Kraemer and Johannes Namal are thriller writers and members of famed psychiatrist Sigmund Freud’s Circle; intellectuals who meet at the Mozart Café to discuss books and current ideas on a variety of topics. When the Germans annex Austria, Freud is able to leave for England, but others must find their own ways to leave the country, hide under fake identities or be rounded up and deported to a concentration camp or be executed.
Mathias and Johannes are faced with anguishing choices to protect their families and friends. With the continual pursuit of an ambitious and sadistic SS officer and the constant fear of their true identities being revealed, their writing may be what ultimately saves them.
This book is a stark look at the daily terrorism faced by these two main characters and what they did to survive. I found the story more intriguing and disturbing because it is told only through the victims’ eyes. There are not a lot of breaks from the intensity of the plot pace and I found I had to put this book down a few times, not because it is not good, but to calm down emotionally. The research is evident and the characters memorable.
I highly recommend this WWII historical fiction!
***
About the Author
J.C. Maetis is better known as British thriller writer John Matthews whose books have sold over 1.6 million copies and been translated in 14 languages. Maetis is his father’s original Jewish family name, which he felt was more fitting for this novel. His father’s family left Lithuania for London in 1919 in the wake of Jewish pogroms there, but many of his extended family perished when Hitler invaded Lithuania in 1941. Maetis lives in Surrey, UK.
