Serbia, late 1990s. Our hero, a single man, writes a regular column for a Belgrade newspaper and spends the rest of his time with his best friend, smoking weed and talking about sex, politics, and life in general. One day on the shore of the Danube he spots a man slapping a beautiful woman. Intrigued, he follows the woman into the tangled streets of the city until he loses sight of her.
A few days later he receives a mysterious manuscript which seems to mutate each time he opens it. To decipher the manuscript's arcane contents he contacts an old schoolmate, now an eccentric mathematician, and a group of men from the local Jewish community.
As the narrator delves deeper, he begins to see signs of anti-Semitism, past and present, throughout the city and he feels impelled to denounce it. But his increasingly passionate columns erupt in a scandal culminating in murder.
- ISBN10 1846555426
- ISBN13 9781846555428
- Publish Date 4 August 2011 (first published 1 January 2011)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 14 January 2016
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Vintage Publishing
- Imprint Harvill Secker
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 320
- Language English