The book of kings

the long version

James Thackara's epic novel The Book of Kings is set across the entire continent of Europe, as well as North and South America and North Africa, in the years shortly before and during World War II and leading up to the present day. The Book of Kings tracks Europe's drift toward Nazism from 1932, when a quartet of students at the Sorbonne - David and Johannes, both German; Justin, a French/Algerian scholarship student; and Duncan, an American with an attachment to "old" Europe - share an apartment on the rue de Fleurus. The Book of Kings sounds the fate of its characters far beyond their commonplace existence as it pursues the enduring questions of absolute evil and man's responsibility. In scenes ranging from the fall of France, the Moscow front, Silesia's camps, the siege of Berlin, and the Amazon rainforests, the design of the novel emerges to reveal civilization strung between its two mortal tendencies, first in the thrall of an irresistible attraction toward cataclysm, then returning from destruction toward redemption.