An astonishing and fantastical autobiographical novel--reminiscent of Italo Calvino and Laurence Sterne--"The System of Vienna" details Jonke's travels through Vienna by streetcar, reporting the bizarre and frustrating encounters he experiences as he progresses--and meanwhile moving not just from trolley-stop to trolley-stop, but through life as well, from innocence to disillusionment, birth to death. Jonke meets a paranoiac fish wholesaler who believes he is directing all of Austrian politics from his little stall, a stamp collector in such deadly earnest he hopes to be appointed to a...