Close cookie details

This site uses cookies. Learn more about cookies.

OverDrive would like to use cookies to store information on your computer to improve your user experience at our Website. One of the cookies we use is critical for certain aspects of the site to operate and has already been set. You may delete and block all cookies from this site, but this could affect certain features or services of the site. To find out more about the cookies we use and how to delete them, click here to see our Privacy Policy.

If you do not wish to continue, please click here to exit this site.

Hide notification

  Main Nav
Married Life
Cover of Married Life
Married Life
a novel
Borrow Borrow

David Vogel has long been regarded as a leading figure of Hebrew literature, and his work has been compared to that of Joseph Roth, Thomas Mann, and Franz Kafka.

Married Life, which was first published in 1929, is Vogel's magnum opus — a sweeping portrait of a doomed marriage and a doomed city. Set in Vienna, the novel tells of the relationship between the penniless writer Rudolf Gurdweill and Baroness Thea von Takow, who treats her husband with cruelty and disdain. In spite of this, Gurdweill struggles to find the will to leave his wife, even when the devoted Lotte Bondheim offers him the prospect of true happiness.

Yet this is no mere story of a love triangle. In astonishingly vivid detail, Vogel evokes the atmosphere of 1920s Vienna, taking us from fashionable cafés and aristocratic estates to the shoemaker's workshop and the almshouse. With decadence and poverty existing side by side, Vienna is depicted as a city on the brink of collapse — a haunting prefigurement of the horrors to come.

With its rich, vital prose, and its profound insight into the human condition, Married Life is truly a modern classic.

David Vogel has long been regarded as a leading figure of Hebrew literature, and his work has been compared to that of Joseph Roth, Thomas Mann, and Franz Kafka.

Married Life, which was first published in 1929, is Vogel's magnum opus — a sweeping portrait of a doomed marriage and a doomed city. Set in Vienna, the novel tells of the relationship between the penniless writer Rudolf Gurdweill and Baroness Thea von Takow, who treats her husband with cruelty and disdain. In spite of this, Gurdweill struggles to find the will to leave his wife, even when the devoted Lotte Bondheim offers him the prospect of true happiness.

Yet this is no mere story of a love triangle. In astonishingly vivid detail, Vogel evokes the atmosphere of 1920s Vienna, taking us from fashionable cafés and aristocratic estates to the shoemaker's workshop and the almshouse. With decadence and poverty existing side by side, Vienna is depicted as a city on the brink of collapse — a haunting prefigurement of the horrors to come.

With its rich, vital prose, and its profound insight into the human condition, Married Life is truly a modern classic.

Available formats-
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB eBook
Languages:-
Copies-
  • Available:
    1
  • Library copies:
    1
Levels-
  • ATOS:
  • Lexile:
  • Interest Level:
  • Text Difficulty:


About the Author-
  • David Vogel was born in 1891 in Satanov, Podolia (now Ukraine), and when World War I broke out he was living in Vienna, where he was arrested as an enemy alien. He emigrated to Tel Aviv in 1929, but left for Berlin after a year, and later settled in Paris. After the outbreak of World War II, he was imprisoned by the French as an Austrian citizen, and later by the Nazis as a Jew. In 1944, he was deported to Auschwitz, where he perished.

Reviews-
  • Publisher's Weekly

    January 1, 1989
    Written in Hebrew and published in Palestine in 1929, this is the single novel by this author, a poet who is presumed to have died at Auschwitz in 1944. Set in Vienna in the 1920s, the novel is a portrait of the disastrous marriage of one Rudolph Gurdweill, a poor Jewish intellectual, to a sadistic and anti-Semitic baroness. Her unfaithfulness and cruelty to the well-meaning but helpless and masochistic writer clearly represent the relationship between Vienna and its Jews. The complex atmosphere of Viennese culture between the wars is conveyed marvelously in highly detailed descriptions of the daily lives of these characters. Countless cigarettes and cups of coffee, and endless rendezvous in cafes, seem to be central to their existence as these doomed characters play out their extraordinarily neurotic roles. Vogel's eye for the telling ironic nuance misses nothing. When Gurdwell notices two policemen standing in a boat in the middle of the canal, stirring the water with a long pole, he thinks to himself, ``They're looking for someone who's going to drown himself tomorrow or next month . . . although it hasn't even entered that person's head yet to put an end to his life.'' This is an important novel, not only as the historic document that it is, but as a work of literature that echoes both Kafka and Mann.

Title Information+
  • Publisher
    Scribe Publications Pty Ltd
  • OverDrive Read
    Release date:
  • EPUB eBook
    Release date:
Digital Rights Information+
  • Copyright Protection (DRM) required by the Publisher may be applied to this title to limit or prohibit printing or copying. File sharing or redistribution is prohibited. Your rights to access this material expire at the end of the lending period. Please see Important Notice about Copyrighted Materials for terms applicable to this content.

Status bar:

You've reached your checkout limit.

Visit your Checkouts page to manage your titles.

Close

You already have this title checked out.

Want to go to your Checkouts?

Close

Recommendation Limit Reached.

You've reached the maximum number of titles you can recommend at this time. You can recommend up to 99 titles every 1 day(s).

Close

Sign in to recommend this title.

Recommend your library consider adding this title to the Digital Collection.

Close

Enhanced Details

Close
Close

Limited availability

Availability can change throughout the month based on the library's budget.

is available for days.

Once playback starts, you have hours to view the title.

Close

Permissions

Close

The OverDrive Read format of this eBook has professional narration that plays while you read in your browser. Learn more here.

Close

Holds

Total holds:


Close

Restricted

Some format options have been disabled. You may see additional download options outside of this network.

Close

MP3 audiobooks are only supported on macOS 10.6 (Snow Leopard) through 10.14 (Mojave). Learn more about MP3 audiobook support on Macs.

Close

Please update to the latest version of the OverDrive app to stream videos.

Close

Device Compatibility Notice

The OverDrive app is required for this format on your current device.

Close

Bahrain, Egypt, Hong Kong, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the Sudan, the Syrian Arab Republic, Tunisia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen

Close

You've reached your library's checkout limit for digital titles.

To make room for more checkouts, you may be able to return titles from your Checkouts page.

Close

Excessive Checkout Limit Reached.

There have been too many titles checked out and returned by your account within a short period of time.

Try again in several days. If you are still not able to check out titles after 7 days, please contact Support.

Close

You have already checked out this title. To access it, return to your Checkouts page.

Close

This title is not available for your card type. If you think this is an error contact support.

Close

An unexpected error has occurred.

If this problem persists, please contact support.

Close

Close

NOTE: Barnes and Noble® may change this list of devices at any time.

Close
Buy it now
and help our library WIN!
Married Life
Married Life
a novel
David Vogel
Choose a retail partner below to buy this title for yourself.
A portion of this purchase goes to support your library.
Close
Close

There are no copies of this issue left to borrow. Please try to borrow this title again when a new issue is released.

Close
Barnes & Noble Sign In |   Sign In

You will be prompted to sign into your library account on the next page.

If this is your first time selecting “Send to NOOK,” you will then be taken to a Barnes & Noble page to sign into (or create) your NOOK account. You should only have to sign into your NOOK account once to link it to your library account. After this one-time step, periodicals will be automatically sent to your NOOK account when you select "Send to NOOK."

The first time you select “Send to NOOK,” you will be taken to a Barnes & Noble page to sign into (or create) your NOOK account. You should only have to sign into your NOOK account once to link it to your library account. After this one-time step, periodicals will be automatically sent to your NOOK account when you select "Send to NOOK."

You can read periodicals on any NOOK tablet or in the free NOOK reading app for iOS, Android or Windows 8.

Accept to ContinueCancel