Volume 51, Number 1 · January 15, 2004
The Antipodes of Glory
By Ian Buruma
The Great Fire
by Shirley Hazzard
Farrar, Straus and Giroux,278 pp., $24.00
Decadence literally refers to something that is falling away. But the word is rarely used literally. Decadence usually means excess: the giddy hedonism of Weimar Berlin, a fizzy cocktail of flappers, jazz, and sexual perversion—not only alive, but dancing on the edge of hysteria. The excesses of the 1920s followed the slaughter of a generation in World War I. It was as if the world, from Berlin to New York, had to engage in frenzied living to forget the stench of death.
Review, 2359 words
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