Status
Available
Genres
Publication
Overlook Books (1988), 192 pages
Description
Still bearing scars from the gulag, a freed POW traverses Russia to arrive at the Polish town of Lodz. In its massive Hotel Savoy, he meets a surreal cast of characters, each eagerly awaiting the return from America of a rich man named Bloomfield. Like Europe itself in 1932, the hotel is the stage upon which characters follow fate to its tragic destination.
User reviews
LibraryThing member akfarrar
.... an American returnee who will solve all the financial troubles of a whole host of shadowy characters trapped in the Hotel Savoy.
The Hotel itself seems to function as a mixture between a spider's web and a somnifer! It is a trap for those returning from the First World War, for the poor and for
There is a missing Greek owner, an old lift boy who holds the trunks of poor guests as security against payment, and a factory owner who is less concerned with the ongoing strike in his factory than trying to make money through speculation on the currency market.
Throughout the short novel there is an awful sense of an imploding world - of a suspended collapse just waiting for a trigger to release it. The characters seem to wish it and at the same time dread the event.
The trigger is provided in the end by one of those silly, unimportant events which are of no significance in themselves.
There is something truly tragic and at the same time terrifying in this story of a Hotel peopled as it is by the flotsam of a disintegrated world.
The Hotel itself seems to function as a mixture between a spider's web and a somnifer! It is a trap for those returning from the First World War, for the poor and for
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the once rich.There is a missing Greek owner, an old lift boy who holds the trunks of poor guests as security against payment, and a factory owner who is less concerned with the ongoing strike in his factory than trying to make money through speculation on the currency market.
Throughout the short novel there is an awful sense of an imploding world - of a suspended collapse just waiting for a trigger to release it. The characters seem to wish it and at the same time dread the event.
The trigger is provided in the end by one of those silly, unimportant events which are of no significance in themselves.
There is something truly tragic and at the same time terrifying in this story of a Hotel peopled as it is by the flotsam of a disintegrated world.
Show Less
LibraryThing member edwinbcn
To me, the paintings of Otto Dix most powerfully show the broken people who came back from the front of World War I, particularly paintings such as "Prager Strasse" (1920).
In a similar way, Hotel Savoy is a novel about a collection of "broken people," bankrupt, scattered but come together in a
In a similar way, Hotel Savoy is a novel about a collection of "broken people," bankrupt, scattered but come together in a
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"louche" hotel, all hoping and looking out for a fabled, rich American. A story of poverty and despair. Show Less
Language
Original language
English