And Then We Moved to Rossenarra

And Then We Moved to Rossenarra: or, The Art of Emigrating is a memoir by the American political novelist Richard Condon, published by Dial Press in 1973. A native of New York City whose early career had mostly been that of a press agent for various Hollywood studios, Condon took up writing relatively late in life but then became both prolific and famous; today he is most remembered for his 1960 political thriller The Manchurian Candidate and for his four later novels about a family of New York gangsters named Prizzi.

And Then We Moved to Rossenarra is a mostly light-hearted and occasionally humorous account of his family's many moves and residences throughout Europe and Mexico in the decades preceding the publication of the memoir. Before their move to Rossenarra, the name of a large, 1824 Georgian country house in County Kilkenny, Ireland, the Condon family had lived in "Paris, Madrid, New York, Mexico City, Paris again, London, Geneva, Locarno... spending a minimum of fourteen months in Spain... and a maximum of nine and a half years in Switzerland." In the late 1960s the Irish government passed legislation permitting foreign writers, composers, and artists to live in Ireland without being subject to Irish income tax. A number of British writers such as Len Deighton, Frederick Forsyth, and Leslie Charteris, as well as the Americans J. P. Donleavy and Anne McCaffrey, immediately took up residence; Condon asserts, however, that despite moving to Rossenarra about the same time, his own finances and citizenship were such that he never benefitted from living in this tax-free haven.

Much of the book is devoted to his purchase and excruciatingly long and expensive restoration of the country house, with many incidents about incompetent plumbers, electricians, and other tradesmen, all directed by a fictional Capo invented by Condon as a humorous device. A memoir rather than a formal autobiography, the narrative is presented in a non-chronological manner, jumping almost randomly from one decade to another. The chapters all have long-winded, whimsical names in the style of 19th-century novels, (In Which we find Locarno. Shall we try England next? Or Crans? Or Adelaide, Australia? How to tell a Rolls Royce from a Mercedes), and there are frequent asides and anecdotes about food and its preparation in various cultures, as well as about some of Condon's books, particularly his first one, The Oldest Confession, and his most famous one, The Manchurian Candidate.

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