A witty yet moving narrative worked up from sketched biographical fragments, 191
3 is an intimate vision of a world that is about to change forever. The stuffy c
onventions of the nineteenth century are receding into the past, and 1913 herald
s a new age of unlimited possibility. Kafka falls in love; Louis Armstrong learn
s to play the trumpet; a young seamstress called Coco Chanel opens her first bou
tique; Charlie Chaplin signs his first movie contract; and new drugs like cocain
e usher in an age of decadence.
Yet everywhere there is the premonition of ru
in - the number 13 is omnipresent, and in London, Paris and Vienna, artists take
the omen and act as if there were no tomorrow. In a Munich hotel lobby, Rilke a
nd Freud discuss beauty and transience; Proust sets out in search of lost time;
and while Stravinsky celebrates the Rite of Spring with industrial cacophony, an
Austrian postcard painter by the name of Adolf Hitler sells his conventional ci
tyscapes.
