The Book of Kings Author:James Thackara One of the publishing sensations of last year, and now sold in Germany, Spain, Holland, Italy, and the UK, James Thackara's The Book of Kings is set across the entire continent of Europe in the years shortly before and during World War II. Charged with the gorgeous ambiance of Hemingway's Paris and rivaling the scope of Dostoevsky and Mel... more »ville, The Book of Kings tracks Germany'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--shares an apartment on the Rue de Fleurus. Thackara brilliantly weaves the stories of these four men whose lives mirror the larger picture. The Book of Kings is a work of extraordinary vision and range magnificently fusing mythology and the inexorable events of history.
"The book nobody should miss reading . . . Comparisons to War and Peace may be effusive but not totally unwarranted. . . . a crowning achievement."--The Seattle Times
"The Book of Kings is in every way a big book. It is also a great work. Mr. Thackara has Tolstoy's talent for painting the grand with small brush strokes. . . . There are many who will turn the last page only to start reading the book once more." --The Economist
"Absorbing . . . when you encounter one of the huge set-pieces that punctuate the action you are rocked on your heels." --The New Yorker
"A noble literary achievement."--San Diego Union Tribune, front page
"The book comes alive in a series of brilliant set pieces . . . . tremendously good."--The Washington Post Book World« less