Austria! Just the name conjures images, doesn’t it? Grand Vienna cafes, Alpine villages, the shadow of empire, the echoes of war. It’s a place that has inspired so many fantastic stories.
If you love getting lost in a book that transports you somewhere specific, here are thirty novels that use Austria as their backdrop, each offering a different window into its world.
This one sticks with you. A young cavalry officer, Hofmiller, makes a social blunder at a dinner party when he asks the host’s paralyzed daughter to dance, because he didn’t realize her condition. His subsequent guilt pulls him into the family’s life.
He offers attention out of a sense of duty, not genuine affection, and this tangle of unspoken feelings and obligations leads to real emotional trouble. Zweig really understood the weight of pity versus true compassion.
Joseph Roth gives us the Trotta family saga over three generations. Their story runs parallel to the slow decline of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It all starts when an ancestor saves Emperor Franz Joseph’s life in battle; this act grants the family newfound status.
We then follow his descendants as they try to live up to this legacy while the world they know crumbles around them. You get a powerful sense of an entire era fading away.
Set in Vienna just before the empire collapsed, this immense novel centers on Ulrich. He’s an intellectual searching for meaning and identity in a world that feels fragmented.
He gets involved with the “Parallel Campaign,” a slightly absurd project meant to celebrate the emperor’s reign. Through Ulrich’s eyes and his interactions with a cast of fascinating characters, Musil paints a huge, detailed portrait of a society teetering on the edge.
Meet Erika Kohut, a piano teacher in Vienna completely dominated by her mother. Outwardly, she’s controlled and elegant, but inwardly, she’s battling intense, disturbing urges that lead her to secret, dark explorations.
Things get even more complicated when a student, Walter Klemmer, becomes obsessed with her. Their relationship descends into a really unsettling power play that looks unflinchingly at obsession.
This short novel has a dreamlike, ominous quality. Jewish vacationers arrive at the Austrian resort town of Badenheim for their usual summer holiday. At first, everything seems normal, idyllic even.
But slowly, subtly, strange new bureaucratic rules appear, restrictions tighten, and an unnamed threat gathers. Appelfeld masterfully shows how normalcy can erode, almost unnoticed, until escape is no longer possible.
Thomas Bernhard’s intensity is on full display here. The story centers on Roithamer, an academic obsessed with building a perfect, cone-shaped house for his sister right in the middle of a forest.
We learn about his consuming project through manuscripts examined by his friend after Roithamer’s death. The narrative explores the crushing weight of this obsessive quest and its impact on his mind and relationships.
Another Bernhard journey into darkness. A young medical intern is dispatched to a desolate Austrian village. His task is to observe and report on Strauch, an elderly, misanthropic painter living in isolation.
The stark, cold landscape mirrors the painter’s bleak philosophy, which he shares through relentless, disturbing monologues. It’s a chilling exploration of despair.
Here’s a classic mystery from E.C.R. Lorac. Chief Inspector Macdonald travels to post-war Vienna to investigate the murder of a British cultural attaché. The city itself, beautiful but scarred and divided by Allied occupation zones, is a key element.
Macdonald must navigate the tensions and secrets hidden beneath the surface of Viennese society, from grand buildings to rubble-strewn streets.
Set during World War I, this novella follows Baron Bagge, an Austro-Hungarian cavalry officer. During a perilous mission into enemy territory, his squadron enters a strange, peaceful town where reality seems to warp.
He experiences uncanny events that blur the lines between life, death, dream, and reality. It’s a haunting, atmospheric story that mixes the grit of war with a touch of the supernatural.
A proper Cold War thriller! A chest is found sunk in an Austrian lake near Salzburg. It contains sensitive documents revealing the identities and activities of former Nazis. American lawyer Bill Mathison gets drawn into a dangerous game.
Various spy agencies and sinister groups race to get their hands on the chest’s contents. Expect espionage, chases, and hidden dangers set against the beautiful Alpine scenery.
Gabriel Allon, the art restorer and Israeli agent, is back. This time, he’s in Vienna to investigate a bombing at a center for Holocaust research.
The case forces him to confront ghosts from his own past and dig into dark historical secrets connecting wartime atrocities to present-day threats. It’s a fast-paced story that moves between past and present.
This intense novella (which inspired Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut) plunges into the psyche of Fridolin, a Viennese doctor. After his wife confesses a fleeting fantasy, Fridolin feels shaken and embarks on a nightmarish journey through Vienna’s hidden worlds.
He confronts his own desires and anxieties. Schnitzler explores the turbulent undercurrents beneath the surface of respectable marriage and society.
This is a frantic race against time. Over twelve hours, from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., Stanislaus Demba tears through Vienna. He’s desperate, trying to raise money, evade capture, and deal with the consequences of a theft and a secret love.
It’s a whirlwind story full of twists, turns, and close calls, all set against the backdrop of the bustling city.
Bernie Gunther, the cynical ex-detective from Berlin, finds himself in battered, post-war Vienna in 1947. He’s hired to prove an old colleague, now working for the Americans, isn’t guilty of murdering an American officer.
Vienna is a grim place, divided and full of spies, black marketeers, and unresolved wartime grudges. Bernie has to navigate this treacherous landscape to find the truth.
This novel takes us to Vienna shortly after World War II. A Swedish journalist arrives in the city, still scarred but slowly coming back to life. She gets involved with a circle of people navigating the complex political situation and their own personal dramas.
The story captures the specific atmosphere of Vienna during that uncertain time of recovery and lingering tensions.
It’s Vienna during World War II, under Nazi occupation. Julia Homburg is a famous actress who makes the incredibly dangerous decision to hide her Jewish husband from the regime, right in their own apartment.
The novel provides a detailed look at daily life filled with fear, suspicion, and difficult moral choices. Julia must navigate betrayals and maintain secrecy while the war rages.
A charming story primarily for younger readers, but adults enjoy it too! Annika lives in Vienna around 1900. She was found as a baby and raised by kind servants. She dreams of finding her real mother.
Then, a glamorous woman appears, claims Annika, and whisks her away to a crumbling German castle. Secrets, delightful characters, and a real affection for old Vienna fill the pages.
Ernst Sebastian is a judge haunted by his past. When he attends a reunion with his former classmates from a prestigious military academy, memories flood back. He recalls their youthful idealism, the harsh discipline, and a specific, troubling incident involving a fellow student.
The novel contrasts the past with the present lives of these men and reflects on guilt and consequence.
This powerful Austrian novel deals with the legacy of the Holocaust and suppressed memories. Set after the war, it follows Hilde.
She returns to her childhood village and starts uncovering uncomfortable truths about her family’s complicity and the community’s silence regarding atrocities committed nearby during the war, particularly the Mühlviertler Hasenjagd massacre.
It’s about the difficulty of confronting a dark past.
Another wonderful Eva Ibbotson story, this time for adults. Ellen, a practical Englishwoman, takes a job as a housemother at an eccentric, progressive boarding school in the Austrian countryside just before World War II.
She falls in love with the place, the children, and Marek, a mysterious music teacher with secrets. As the Nazi threat grows, their idyllic world is endangered.
A short, sharp, unsettling read. Anna, a middle-aged housewife, narrates the events that led to the death of Stella, a young relative who came to stay with Anna’s family.
Stella’s innocence and vulnerability disrupt the family’s polite facade and expose their selfishness and moral failings. Anna recounts her own passive role in Stella’s fate with chilling detachment. It’s about complicity through silence.
In a Parisian café, a Russian émigré named Golubchik tells his life story to the narrator. It’s a tale driven by obsession, particularly his lifelong envy and hatred of a successful rival.
His confession winds through tales of espionage, betrayal, assumed identities, and unrequited love, mostly set against the backdrop of Eastern Europe and Russia before settling in Paris, but with connections back to the old empire’s sphere.
This novel fictionalizes the life of the real Austrian chess player Carl Haffner around the turn of the 20th century in Vienna. Haffner was a brilliant but unassuming and impoverished chess master.
The story focuses on his quiet dedication to the game, his struggles with poverty, and his famous drawn match against the world champion Lasker. It captures the atmosphere of Vienna and the world of chess at the time.
From the author of Bambi, this is the story of Florian, a magnificent white Lipizzaner stallion born at the famous Spanish Riding School in Vienna.
We follow his life, from his glorious days as one of Emperor Franz Joseph’s prized horses to the turmoil and hardships brought by World War I and the collapse of the empire. It’s a touching story about animals, loyalty, and changing times.
Meet Simon Brenner, an ex-cop turned ambulance driver in Vienna. This darkly funny crime novel sees Brenner get unwillingly involved in investigating a series of suspicious deaths occurring among elderly patients being transported by rival ambulance companies.
Haas has a unique, conversational, and witty style. Brenner is a wonderfully world-weary character navigating bizarre situations.
Jonas wakes up one morning in Vienna to discover he is utterly alone. Everyone else in the city—and seemingly the world—has vanished. He drives through empty streets, explores abandoned buildings, and tries to figure out what happened.
As days turn into weeks, strange things occur, and the isolation becomes deeply unnerving. It’s a suspenseful story about solitude and fear.
It’s 1914, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire is mobilizing for war. Young Ensign Resch is caught up in the patriotic fervor but also finds himself in a passionate, doomed affair with a married noblewoman.
The novel follows his experiences on the Serbian front and his desperate attempts to save the regimental standard (flag) during the army’s chaotic retreat. It captures the death throes of the old order.
John Irving’s first novel is a wild ride. Two university students, Hannes and Siggy, travel across Austria on a motorcycle in the late 1960s. Their grand, perhaps crazy, plan is to liberate all the animals from the Vienna Zoo.
The narrative mixes their picaresque journey with flashbacks to Siggy’s family history during the Anschluss and World War II. It’s funny, tragic, and full of Irving’s signature energy.
Another atmospheric mystery set in post-war Vienna, this one from 1956. An English journalist gets caught up in solving the murder of a cabaret singer. The investigation takes him through a city still marked by war damage and Cold War tensions.
He encounters a range of characters, from occupation officials to black marketeers, in a story filled with suspense and local color.
Published anonymously in 1906, this book caused quite a scandal.
Purporting to be the memoirs of a Viennese prostitute, it frankly recounts Josefine’s life, starting from her childhood poverty in Vienna’s outskirts and detailing her subsequent experiences and observations about sexuality and society in the late 19th century.
It’s known for its explicit content and its unique perspective on the era.