Galicia, Austria-Hungary, 1913. In the castle of a frontier town, on the border between Europe and the East, the worldly, corrupt Count-Governor Wiladowski watches helplessly while a wave of assassinations sweeps the Empire. When a member of his own family is murdered, the Count gives broad police powers to his spymaster, Jacob Tausk, a brilliant young jew whose ruthless war on terror extends into every corner of the province and beyond.
Michael Andre Bernstein's compelling first novel evokes a densely believable world on the edge of collapse, full of haunting suggestiveness of a fable or a nightmare and the erotic, mystical and apocalyptic passions of the age.