Like Sartre, Camus, and Kundera before him, Nicholas Mosley has put forth a supremely challenging work that relies as much on philosophical and political themes as pure storytelling. Max Ackerman and Eleanor Anders are ambitious intellectuals--British and German, respectively--whose fascination with the scientific trends and political upheaval of the 20th century take them around the world and, eventually, into each other's arms. Intensifying, perhaps complicating the narrative of this 1990 Whitbread Prize winner is Mosley's use as a metaphor the Talmudic myth of the Lamed-Vov, a tale of 36 upstanding people for whom God sustains life on Earth. Left unanswered is whether Ackerman and Anders are among them.