Narrated in the style of Joseph Roth's masterpiece Rebellion, Hugo Hamilton's new novel, The Pages, presents a strikingly inventive account of a book's journey. The narrative begins in May 1933, when the book is salvaged from the Nazi book-burning in Berlin. It chronicles the life of its Austrian-Jewish author, a writer on the run, alongside the poignant story of his wife, Friederike, who succumbed to mental illness.
Hamilton weaves together a tapestry of interconnected tales, including that of Andreas Pum, a struggling barrel-organ player, and a young German-American woman who discovers a small, hand-drawn map in the book's blank pages. This thrilling mystery leads her back to Berlin, the book's birthplace. The Pages resonates with deep echoes of the past while illuminating the present, offering an inspiring narrative about the resilience of literature over the course of a century.