In Babylon

Winner of two major European prizes, this funny, quirky chronicle of a family of Dutch clockmakers is a bestseller in the Netherlands. Sixty-year-old Nathan Hollander is stranded in a winter blizzard with his young niece, Nina, in the deserted house of his late Uncle Herman. As they wait for the weather to improve, Nathan tells Nina the story of their forefathers -- a family of clockmakers who came to the Netherlands from Eastern Europe and then emigrated to America before WWII. An extraordinary and rich family history emerges. An epic family saga, a Gothic novel gone haywire, a very human story and a chronicle of the twentieth century, In Babylon is already set to be a classic European novel. A piece of very solid, traditional storytelling combined with a very funny, sensual magical realism. A brilliant merging of the lightness of popular American writing and the depth of European literature. "The worst winter blizzard the East Netherlands has seen in many years has left Nathan Hollander and his niece, Nina, snowbound in the deserted house of his late uncle Herman. Nathan has inherited the old hunting lodge in the middle of the forest, on the condition that he will write a biography of Herman, one of the world's leading sociologists. But uncle and niece are not alone; apart from Chaim and Magnus, two seventeenth-century family ghosts, there is another presence, unknown and unfriendly."--Jacket