from the back:

"It is spring 1939 in the age of anxiety. In months Europe will be Hitler's, and Badenheim, a resort town vaguely in the orbit of Vienna, is preparing for its usual summer season. Soon, the vacationers arrive, as they always have, a sample of Jewish middle-class life. The story unfolds as matter-of-factly as a Chekhov play. The characters are so deeply held by their defensive trivia that they manage to misconstrue every signal of their fate. Finally, de facto prisoners in their familiar resort, the vacationers, now increased by the forced crowding-in of others hardly on vacation, take on the lineaments of disaster."

A quick and disturbing read. The subtle, growing sense of menace throughout the book left me unbalanced. There were places that I wanted to reach in and shake the characters. i suspect that will be a familiar feeling as I read through Appelfeld's books.

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