Description: Ancient Egypt. Ptolemaic Egypt. Carthage. Rome. Czarist Russia. Manchukuo. The British Empire. Rhodesia. What happens to people when they become stateless? What happens to the human wreckage that escapes from vanished Empires and countries? What emerges from the chaotic breakdown of countries and empires?The past is often forgotten, but the future is inescapable. Gemma, Poppy, Kulli, and Violet, after a transformative year, find themselves moving in different directions. Gemma, now engaged to Enoch Tara, contemplates life after marriage. Kulli returns to Estonia in an attempt to reconstruct and restore her family's past. Poppy, pregnant and living in the Lake District, finds herself largely alone while Brian, in London, struggles to understand and contain a growing financial crisis. Violet sees her daughter off to university, reconnects with Akiko, her former Oxford University roommate, and hosts a hunt weekend at her Palladian countryhouse in Northumberland. And Carter Holland, the secretive London financier, attempts to guide the course of history.
