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A sweeping, gorgeously written debut novel of duty to family and country, interest, and blood vessels ties unraveling in the priced political local climate of Berlin between the wars. "Empire of the Senses is lush, smart, captivating, affecting, interesting, beautifully researched and well made. Spending time in the world of this novel can be an absolute pleasure" (Aimee Bender). Lev Perlmutter, an assimilated, cultured German Jew, enlists to battle in World Battle I, leaving behind his gentile better half, Josephine, and their children, Franz and Vicki. Moving between Lev's and Josephine's viewpoints, part one of the novel targets Lev's activities on the Eastern Front - both in battle and in love - which render his life at home a pale aftermath by comparison. Part two accumulates in Berlin in 1927-1928: the Perlmutter children, now young adults, grapple with the own questions - Franz attracted into the dark brown shirt movement, fighting his unexpressed homosexuality; Vicki seduced by jazz, bobbed locks, and falling deeply in love with a young man who wants to take her to Palestine. Unlike most historical novels of the kind, The Empire of the Senses is not about the Holocaust but rather about the brew that led to it and about why it was unimaginable to common people like Lev and his better half. Plotted with meticulous precision and filled by heroes who feel and fantasy to the fullest, it retains us rapt as the tides of ethnic loss and ethnic hatred come to coexist with those of love, interest, and the power of the individual spirit.
