Künstlers in Paradise

Once upon a time, there was a little girl who lived in the fairy-tale city of Vienna. Because it was a real and dangerous time—1939, to be precise—she was forced to flee the Nazis with her family. They found refuge in the community of illustrious directors, actors, writers, and composers who held court in Hollywood’s exile kingdom.

But every fairy-tale has its dragons—and every dragon its storyteller. In 2020, Even as a pandemic roars at the gate, the little girl, now old but undefeated, continues to tell her extraordinary tale. An ill-timed visit forces twentysomething New Yorker Julian to shelter in place in Venice Beach with his glamorous and eccentric ninety-three-year-old grandmother, Mamie Künstler, and her inscrutable housekeeper.

To pass the time, Mamie regales Julian with stories of her adolescent adventures among the émigré elite, from tennis lessons with Arnold Schoenberg to a romance with Greta Garbo. During his unexpected extended stay in his grandmother’s crumbling domain, Julian undergoes his own personal quest as he reckons with the trajectory of the life he thought he wanted and what role he will choose to play in it all. Cathleen Schine, “the modern-day Jewish Jane Austen,” has had her novels described by the New York Times over the past four decades as “elegantly intricate,” “as witty as they are erudite,” a “delectable fantasy,” and “full of sparkle.” Künstlers in Paradise brings all that magic and more to this comedic, captivating tale of exile and the power of stories—both the ones we hand down and the ones held secretly in the heart.