Cafe du Dome

The Austrian authoress Anna Gmeyner published Cafe du Dome, her second novel written in exile, under the pseudonym Anna Reiner in 1941. This novel is in the tradition of the topical novel of the Weimar Republic and describes the everyday life of the exiles in Paris in the mid-1930's. Their stories develop in kaleidoscopic fashion in and around the cafe which is their central meeting place and their refuge. The Querido-Verlag Amsterdam intended to publish cafe du Dome in German; the novel Manja. A Story of Five Children (1938) had already been published there. The novel set in Germany led to her rediscovery as a writer in the 1980's. But the German invasion of the Netherlands put an end to this project. The English translation of the manuscript was published in 1941 and the German original has never been traced. However, this new edition enables the public to read the English version.