In Christina Stead’s The Little Hotel , the guests cannot escape each other. They are like people sealed in a pandemic pod. Set after the Second World War, the multinational set of characters in this novel don’t know what changed world will await them when they creep out of their “fourth class” Swiss hotel by Lake Geneva. For some of them, the scale of the unknowns is so paralyzing they choose to hole up for years to avoid finding out. Stead wrests great psychological insight from the growing restlessness and affections of her characters, who are outrageous and great fun to read about. This sly, concise novel packs in quite a number of dark truths, too, about the prejudices that immobilized postwar Europe and continue to immobilize in our present era.