Grand Hotel by Vicki Baum

This 1920s smash-hit novel about the denizens of a Berlin hotel was turned into a smash-hit movie and musical; Baum felt dogged by its extraordinary success all of her life. (She described herself as a “first-class second-rate writer.”) I read it in a gulp one night in Paris, sleepless from jet lag. Near the end, there is an odd moment, right in the middle of the action, when everything pauses for a haunting, dirge-like dialogue between a dying man and a naked beauty on the highly specific indignities of their experiences of poverty. I found it worth reading just for that.