2A tale of a Jewish family in Eastern Europe in 1905, a novel of history, ideas and delusions
Fanning out from the small Moldavian village of Celovest at the turn of the 20th century, The Dream of Ages follows the global saga of the four sons and two daughters of a traditional Jewish family as their lives twist and turn in the storms of war, politics, art and ideology that rip apart the old Empires of the 19th century and create the schisms, aspirations, conflicts and realities of the modern world. Through WW I, the Russian Revolution and civil war, the dream of Zion, the magnet of America, the lure of the far east in China, the epic narratives of the scattered siblings turn from 1905 Odessa, the golden ages of Paris and Berlin, to the foundation years of Cecil B. DeMille's Hollywood, the mad frenetic world of vintage vaudeville, the Jewish settlements in Palestine, resistance and terror, the tale is drawn together by the reluctant quest of the next generation for answers to the moral, social, political and psychological puzzles that bedevil our own Age of Confusion, our worship of the "new" undermined by the unavoidable consequences of what passed before.
Told in the intertwined voices of the protagonists, a novel of history, ideas, delusions, myths, magic, the trials and errors of life, and the forces that made us what we are.