Conspirators

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, and his province. When a member of his own family is murdered, the count gives broad police powers to his spymaster, Jakob Tausk: a brilliant young Jew whose ruthless war on terror extends into every corner of the province and beyond, enlisting union organizers, financiers, aristocrats and their servants, and a young novelist and playwright, newly arrived in the Vienna of Franz Josef and Freud, hungry for literary success. In the wake of new terrorist attacks, a mysterious preacher appears in the provincial capital--one of the so-called "wonder rabbis" from the shtetls of the East-trailing a band of fanatical disciples who proclaim him the messiah. Word of the charismatic leader spreads quickly from the Jewish quarter to the castle itself, and soon Tausk finds himself serving two masters: the count and the richest man in the province, Moritz Rotenburg, who has a private interest in the wonder rabbi and whose only son has returned from university, burning for revolution, to gather disciples of his own. Moving from underground meetings and makeshift synagogues to the bedrooms of country estates and the secret high councils of the ailing thousand-year-old Habsburg Empire, Michael Andre Bernstein's compelling first novel evokes a densely believable world on the edge of collapse, full of the haunting suggestiveness of a fable or nightmare, and the erotic, mystical, and apocalyptic passions of an age. "

About the Author :
Michael Andre Bernstein was raised and educated in Europe, Canada, and the United States. He is a frequent contributor to The Times Literary Supplement, the Los Angeles Times Book Review, and The New Republic."

Review :
Conspirators is a deeply original novel, grand and far-seeing in its conception, comprehensive in its close examination of life in a Jewish community in eastern Austria. The blind ardor of the conspirators is matched by the blindness of fate, and the intensifying fever of their plots is linked to the onset of the First World War. The qualities of the writing suggested to this reader the work of Musil, and Mann, and the closenes of its observation, to Proust. Paula Fox, author of Borrowed Finery In Conspirators Bernstein has created a rich weave of ingenious plot and counterplot, sharp psychological insight, and wicked humour, all infused with the dark sensuality of the era he so evocatively brings to life. Nancy Richler, author of Your Mouth Is Lovely " "Conspirators" is a deeply original novel, grand and far-seeing in its conception, comprehensive in its close examination of life in a Jewish community in eastern Austria. The blind ardor of the conspirators is matched by the blindness of fate, and the intensifying fever of their plots is linked to the onset of the First World War. The qualities of the writing suggested to this reader the work of Musil, and Mann, and the closenes of its observation, to Proust. "Paula Fox, author of Borrowed Finery" In Conspirators Bernstein has created a rich weave of ingenious plot and counterplot, sharp psychological insight, and wicked humour, all infused with the dark sensuality of the era he so evocatively brings to life. "Nancy Richler, author of Your Mouth Is Lovely"" ""Conspirators" is a deeply original novel, grand and far-seeing in its conception, comprehensive in its close examination of life in a Jewish community in eastern Austria. The blind ardor of the conspirators is matched by the blindness of fate, and the intensifying fever of their plots is linked to the onset of the First World War. The qualities of the writing suggested to this reader the work of Musil, and Mann, and the closenes of its observation, to Proust." --Paula Fox, author of "Borrowed Finery" "In Conspirators Bernstein has created a rich weave of ingenious plot and counterplot, sharp psychological insight, and wicked humour, all infused with the dark sensuality of the era he so evocatively brings to life." --Nancy Richler, author of "Your Mouth Is Lovely"