Conspirators

'A deeply original novel, grand and far-seeing in its conception... The qualities of the writing suggested to this reader the work of Musil and Mann and, in the closeness of its observations, Proust.' Paula Fox

Austria-Hungary, 1913. In the castle of a frontier town, the worldly, corrupt Count-Governor Wiladowski watches while a wave of assassinations sweeps the Empire. When one of his family is murdered the Count gives broad police powers to his spymaster, Jacob Tausk. In the wake of new terrorist attacks, a mysterious preacher appears - trailing a band of fanatical disciples. Soon Tausk finds himself serving two masters: the Count and the richest man in the province, Moritz Rotenburg, whose only son is burning for revolution. Compelling and brilliantly imagined, Conspirators evokes the venerable Habsburg empire on the edge of collapse and conjures the political and apocalyptic passions of the age.