While Europe drifts toward Nazism, four students share an apartment on the Rue de Fleurus. Thackara’s epic novel brilliantly forges the stories of these four men whose lives mirror the large picture of events around the world.
The title alludes to God’s prophetic warning to Samuel about the rise of man-made kings. James Thackara, as John Walsh wrote in the New Yorker, “watches Hitler’s rise from a dozen different perspectives: at Nuremberg rallies, as reported in dinner-table gossip, in close-up appearances at Hindenburg’s side, in letters and rumors of war, in the gradually thickening atmosphere of fright and inevitability.” This is a work of extraordinary vision and range, magnificently fusing myth and the inexorable events of history.
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“Mr. Thackara has Tolstoy’s talent for painting the grand with small brushstrokes…There are many who will turn the last page only to start reading the book once more.” — Economist
“Mr. Thackara has Tolstoy’s talent for painting the grand with small brushstrokes…There are many who will turn the last page only to start reading the book once more.”
“Absorbing…when you encounter one of the huge set-pieces that punctuate the action you are rocked on your heels.”
“The book comes alive in a series of brilliant set pieces…Tremendously good.”
“The book nobody should miss reading…a crowning achievement.”
“A noble literary achievement.”
“Stabs with compelling intensity…a unique fictional journey.”
" Not as good as it should have been. Perhaps a work of genius, but more likely a life's work (25 years or something in the writing) that just was not as wonderful as Thackera intended. "
James Thackara was born in California in 1944 and educated in Buenos Aires, Provence, California, Rome, Switzerland and New England, graduating from Harvard in 1967, where he studied under Peter Taylor, Fredric Jameson, and Joseph Frank. He is the author of two other novels, America’s Children and Ahab’s Daughter.
Simon Vance (a.k.a. Robert Whitfield) is an award-winning actor and narrator. He has earned more than fifty Earphones Awards and won the prestigious Audie Award for best narration thirteen times. He was named Booklist’s very first Voice of Choice in 2008 and has been named an AudioFile Golden Voice as well as an AudioFile Best Voice of 2009. He has narrated more than eight hundred audiobooks over almost thirty years, beginning when he was a radio newsreader for the BBC in London. He is also an actor who has appeared on both stage and television.
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