In Babylon

by Moring, Marcel

• ISBN13: 9780688176457
• ISBN10: 0688176453
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-03-02
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publications

Summary

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. But they are not alone: Apart from Chaim and Magnus, two seventeenth-century family ghosts, there is another presence, unknown and unfriendly. As they wait for the storm to subside, Nathan and Nina piece together the story of their forefathers, a family of itinerant Jewish clockmakers who came to the Netherlands from Eastern Europe, and then fled to America in 1939. An extraordinary family history emerges, as well as many unsolved mysteries: For instance, what happened to the brilliant Zeno, who became a leader of a messianic sect and then vanished without a trace; why did Uncle Herman, a respected academic, end up dying in such undignified circumstances -- underneath an eighteen-year-old call girl?

Table of Contents

Part One
Travellers	3	(10)
Sauerkraut	13	(19)
There is a God	32	(8)
The Kotzker	40	(8)
Who's There?	48	(32)
A Land of Milk and Butter	80	(62)
Zeno	142	(11)
Part Two
On Our Way (to the Middle)	153	(18)
The Second Law of Thermodynamics	171	(41)
Lacrima Christi	212	(30)
The Tower	242	(5)
Quid Pro Quo	247	(25)
This is Germany	272	(19)
Part Three/Four
Punishment	291	(7)
A Fairy Tale	298	(16)
Long Ago and Far Away	314	(12)
Fathers and Sons	326	(16)
The Depths of the Depths	342	(49)
Part Five
Stranger	391