The Glass Room

Short-listed for the Man Booker Prize and a New York Times Best Seller, the extraordinary story of a modernist architectural masterpiece and the lives caught within its orbit.

A monument to European optimism—and the single house that endured the darkest storms of twentieth-century history.

In 1920s Czechoslovakia, newlyweds Viktor and Liesel Landauer commission a stunning light-filled villa from modernist architect Rainer von Abt. Built with a translucent onyx wall and vast plate-glass windows, the Landauer House becomes an instant masterpiece—a monument to European optimism, high art, and open living.

Yet as domestic secrets begin to fracture the marriage within, the shadow of World War II looms outside. Forced to flee into exile to escape the Nazi occupation, the Landauers leave behind their home to be seized and repurposed—first as a chilling Nazi laboratory, then under Soviet rule, and finally as a state relic.

Spanning six decades, Simon Mawer’s The Glass Room is a haunting, sweeping novel about how art, passion, and human lives are shattered and reshaped by history.