‘Unflinchingly potent … Revolutionaries, war heroes, teachers and phantoms populate these magnetic pages’ Irish Independent ‘Rich, intriguing … Maybe Esther calls to mind the itinerant style of W. G. Sebald’ Guardian ‘Intensely involving … a fervent meditation on love and loss, with a remarkable cast of characters’ Financial Times ‘Mesmerising. It is writing that dazzles … deeply thoughtful and with insights that flash like sharp implements’ New Statesman 'There's a literary miracle on every page here, the sort of book that makes you fall in love with reading. A Proust for the Google age' Peter Pomerantsev, author of Nothing is True and Everything is Possible 'This intimately told quest into the darkness of the 20th century is luminously unforgettable. Maybe Esther, on her civilising journey ‘against time’, will stay with me forever' Kapka Kassabova, author of Border ‘Rarely is research into family history this exciting, this moving. If this were a novel it would seem exaggerated and unbelievable. This is great literature’ Der Spiegel ‘Modern German literature is richer for this intelligent, flamboyant and extremely original voice’ Die Zeit

• Winner of four book prizes in Germany where it was published in 2014 • Brilliant reviews on hardback publication • Translated into nineteen languages • For fans of Daniel Mendelsohn’s The Lost (5kTCM), or W. G. Sebald’s Austerlitz, (100k TCM) Competition: the lost an oddysey if this is a man the truce second hand time the history of the jews east west street borderlands nothing. daniel mendelsohn primo levi svetlana alexeivich simon schama philippe sands kapka kassbova peter pomerantsev