From the very beginning - the birth of the narrator's father in the middle of a bridge party - the reader is plunged headlong into the world of Vienna, a novel crowded with voices, characters, tragedy and joy.

This is an account of the disintegration of history and identity in the twentieth century through the adventures of one family - half-Jewish Viennese, split apart by the Nazi invasion and sent out into the world. Dispensing with linear narrative, the story loops forwards and back to follow each member on their winding course. Their experiences encompass fraudsters, footballers, fools and fur coats as the narrative moves from Austria to London, from Canada to the battlefields of Burma.

This is a landmark European novel of impressive reach and power whose readership will spread as widely as the family whose story it tells. It introduces in Eva Menasse an intimate chronicler of human experience and an unashamedly gleeful storyteller. Her cast of entrancing characters and unexpected events show us imperceptibly the formation and disintegration of family history and identity.