The last of six children, Heimito von Doderer was born in a small eighteenth-century chateau in Weidlingau, on the rural fringes of Vienna, to Wilhelm Ritter von Doderer, an architect and civil engineer, and his German-born wife Luise Wilhelmine von Hügel von Doderer. The writer, whose striking Christian name is a diminutive of the Spanish Jaime, grew up in a family not only of some affluence but also one with literary connections: through his paternal grandmother he was related to the romantic poet Nikolaus Lenau. The family was Protestant, although Doderer himself eventually converted to the dominant Catholicism of his homeland. His birthplace, the Laudonsche Forsthaus, erected for the Empress Maria Theresa's Field Marshal Gideon von Laudon, had been rented by Doderer's father so that his family could be closer to him while he was at work regulating the flow of the unpredictable Wien river. The...