In his expansive European novel, Robert Menasse draws a wide arc between times, nations, the inevitable, and the irony of fate, between petty bureaucracy and great emotions. Fenia Xenopoulou, an official in the Directorate-General for Culture of the European Commission, faces a challenging task. She is to polish the Commission's image. But how? She commissions the advisor Martin Susman to develop an idea. The idea takes shape - the shape of a ghost from history that stirs unrest within the EU institutions. David de Vriend is fading away in a nursing home across from the Brussels cemetery, approaching his death. As a child, he jumped from a deportation train that took his parents to their deaths. Now he is to testify to what he is about to forget. Commissioner Brunfaut also faces a difficult task. He must.