Running from 1913 to 1938, from the eve of one world war to the eve of the next, from disaster to disaster, full of upheavals, reversals and abrupt twists of plot, the novel tells of one man's foppish, sleepwalking, spoiled youth and then his struggle to come to terms with the uncongenial society of post-First World War Vienna, financial ruin, and the first intimations of Nazi barbarities.