Snows of Yesteryear by Gregor von Rezzori

Now I have changed my job there is no need for me to keep researching Romanian markets.

But I carried on with some of the reading, including Gregor von Rezzori's Snows of Yesteryear (has nothing to do with market research, but I included it because it looked interesting).

The author's style has a Proustian quality (not a pastiche).

At the end of the Second World War the author is in the West. The town of Czernowitz becomes occupied by Ukraine. Eventually, after the fall of communism, the author returns to his childhood home as an old man.

And he writes:

"All in all, this certainly was not a world of ease and plenty, and it was entirely free of the mad waste and squandering that is the hallmark of late Occidental consumer paradises. There was no sales talk, no urging to buy this or that, nor did anything irritate by junky superabundance. The moderation was pleasing, whether or not it was voluntary. I felt no obligation to purchase or become the user of anything, and this circumstance may have given me the deceptive impression that the people here were possessed of the dignity of those who voluntarily do without and content themselves with little."

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Snows-Yesteryear-Portraits-Autobiography-Translated/dp/0141192739