Sunday book pick: You don’t want to check out of Vicki Baum’s ‘Grand Hotel’

“Grand Hotel, you think. Most expensive hotel, you think. God knows what marvels you expect from a hotel like this. You will soon know all about it. The whole hotel is only a rotten pub. It is exactly the same with the whole of life. The whole of life is a rotten pub.”

Vicki Baum’s 1929 novel Grand Hotel is a cultural icon today. It was almost immediately translated by Basil Creighton into English and published in 1930 (and is still the translation that you are most likely to read). Grand Hotel makes no claim of modesty and very much seems to have been written to be performed. Baum adapted the novel into a play in 1930 but the novel has been most decisively preserved for posterity in its dazzling 1932 movie adaptation starring Hollywood legends like Joan Crawford and Greta Garbo