It is 1910 and to ten-year-old Oskar Grunewald, the Melville family is impossibly, incomprehensibly glamorous. Born into privilege, buttressed by inherited wealth, their certainties are as unshakeable as the walls of their Victorian castle. It is a world to which Oskar, mathematics prodigy and son of a penniless German composer, has no wish to belo.
Originally published: London: Harvill Secker, 2015.
It is 1910 and to ten-year-old Oskar Grunewald, the Melville family is impossibly, incomprehensibly glamorous. Born into privilege, buttressed by inherited wealth, their certainties are as unshakeable as the walls of their Victorian castle. It is a world to which Oskar, mathematics prodigy and son of a penniless German composer, has no wish to belong. But when Theo Melville is killed in the Great War, shattering his family's lives, Oskar finds himself drawn reluctantly into the gaping hole his death has left behind.