"Empty houses dot Eastern Europe. Once inhabited by families - Croatian or Italian, Slavic or Jewish, partisan or fascist, capitalist or communist - the houses stand empty now, washed by waves of chaos. Objects of legal suits, objects of desire, these houses can bewitch the unwary." "One such empty house in Istria (the mountainous peninsula, formerly of Yugoslavia, on the Adriatic) becomes the obsesssional focus of Richard Swartz's quirky and original first novel.".

"A House in Istria takes place over just seven blazing hot days and is narrated by the obsessed man's wife. He is from elsewhere; she is a native of Istria. He must have the house: he drags the poor wife into long burlesque conversations with neighbors and lawyers and owners. The out-of-control husband may not speak the language, but he doesn't hesitate to involve his wife in surreal scenes with nearly insane characters.

She speaks the local dialect and Italian as well as whatever unspecified language she uses with her husband with equal ease. Since everything the husband knows (and everything the reader knows) must be channeled through her, we enter a world in which nothing is directly intelligible."--BOOK JACKET.