Andrew Riemer's masterful account of the changes in Australian society in the years after World War II, as experienced by the author and his family after leaving Hungary.On a freezing November day in 1946, Andrew Riemer, then a 10-year-old with mumps, left a bomb-scarred Budapest on his way to Australia. In 1990, just a few days before Christmas, he returns to the city of his birth where, amid the decay of a world waking from totalitarian rule, he tries to reconstruct the past from shreds of memory and family myth.In the years between, his career had taken him from being an expert in French-knitting, a skill acquired when, unable to speak English, he was put in a class for intellectually handicapped children, to Sydney University, where he taught English Literature.

Andrew Riemer's return to the heartland of the Habsburg empire - Austria and Hungary - in 1991, having left there at the age of 10 in 1946.Award-winning author Andrew Riemer revisits Eastern Europe, having left it at the age of ten, and presents a sparkling account of his travels in Austria and Hungary, the heartland of the Habsburg Empire. He takes us from Vienna, which he calls a theme park dedicated to images of a romantic past, to the chaos of contemporary Hungary. The cities and towns of his childhood memories have altered almost beyond recognition and yet are somehow familiar, with the spirit of the long-dead Habsburg world evident-the cafes are still filled with cakes oozing cream and custard, and the rich aroma of freshly roasted coffee and vanilla.A travel book, an exploration of the past and a shrewd examination of contemporary politics and culture, The Habsburg Cafe illuminates the experiences of a troubled and perplexing age.