First published in 1989, this paperback version is just under 390 pages and describes the end of an era when Vienna was the cultural capital of Europe.
I've always had a strong affection for Vienna, and visited it many times in my early teens. There is something magical about Vienna, an aura of the past. The last Habsburg Emperor, Franz-Joseph, ruled for nearly 68 years, dying in the middle of the First World War in his mid-80s. He was thankfully spared the ignominy of witnessing the destruction of the Habsburg Empire, so well-captured in the title of the book: Thunder Twilight.
The author himself expresses this well when discussing the genre known as Wiener Lieder: "Over a hundred Wiener Lieder have been composed in the last 80 years. All were songs of lyrical wistfulness. They sighed of a love not for a woman or a man but for Vienna, for that rainbow of a town, fraying away exquisitely between vineyard and Danube; for a world whose doom was it enchantment..." (p.186).
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