Jeremy Gavron's bold and brilliant new novel invites you on a remarkable walking tour - a tour during which the ghosts of London's Brick Lane open up their front doors.

Each house has a story to tell. At number 30, in the autumn of 1888, a man is arrested with a packet of entrails in his pocket and Inspector Abberline wonders if he has caught the Whitechapel murderer. Where number 111 now stands a medieval apprentice and a young nun are caught meeting at a spring. At 98, in 1904, the People's Revolution gets underway.

As we journey down the street, these lives begin to echo each other across time. At number 41 a man tries to hide his family in the shadows of a ruined London; 1500 years later, a gangster's sister lives with the consequences of having been found. At number 246 a mammoth dies, and long afterwards, a giant's thighbone is discovered. Beneath it all, a young woman trawls through the sewers, finding the things the rest of us have lost or forgotten. From within these individual stories, we hear the echoes of history.

Is there something about Brick Lane that has shaped these lives? Bangladeshis, Jews, Huguenots, brewers, soldiers, farmers and medieval monks - people on the run and families determined to make a new home. Each has come to Brick Lane. Each has left its ghosts.