In Babylon - Paperback

by Marcel Ming (Author)

Winner of two major European prizes, this funny, quirky chronicle of a family of Dutch clockmakers is a bestseller in the Netherlands.

Sixty-year-old Nathan Hollander is stranded in a winter blizzard with his young niece, Nina, in the deserted house of his late Uncle Herman. As they wait for the weather to improve, Nathan tells Nina the story of their forefathers - a family of clockmakers who came to the Netherlands from Eastern Europe and then emigrated to America before WWII. An extraordinary and rich family history emerges.

An epic family saga, a Gothic novel gone haywire, a very human story and a chronicle of the twentieth century, In Babylon is already set to be a classic European novel. A piece of very solid, traditional storytelling combined with a very funny, sensual magical realism. A brilliant merging of the lightness of popular American writing and the depth of European literature.

Back Jacket

The worst blizzard the East Netherlands has seen in many years has left Nathan Hollander and his niece, Nina, snowbound in the deserted house of their late Uncle Herman. Waiting for the storm to subside, they piece together the story of their forefathers, a family of itinerant clockmakers who came from Eastern Europe to the Netherlands in the seventeenth century and fled to America in 1939.

In this funny, quirky, epic novel, Marcel Ming weaves a gloriously inventive and very human story about man's constant drive towards progression and expansion, his coming and going, from the Old World to the New - and his desire, despite everything, for home and homeland.

'Certain books make the reader recall what extraordinary contraptions these objects are. Paper, stitching, some glue, a bit of cardboard, ink: lo and behold, a Tardis. Not much to look at from the outside, but inside, infinite, forever unfolding, a tower to the clouds and a tunnel deep into the earth, an arrow into the heart. In 'Babylon' is such book. It is impossible to put this fat, rich novel into any kind of category. It moves confidently between family history, fairy story, love story, ghost story. Like the Jewish family whose stories it unfolds, it is wide-ranging, adaptable, learned and clever.'
ERICA WAGNER, 'The Times'

'Marcel Ming is beyond doubt one of the most imaginative and perceptive novelists writing today'
PAUL BINDING, 'TLS'

'A fat, rich novel...stuffed with story, bulging with plot. Read it once, then read it again.'
THE TIMES

''In Babylon', a book rich in death, ghosts and jokes, a dynasty of wandering clockmakers make their way, forever impelled westwards as refugees. It is Marcel Ming's achievement that he has rendered this profusion of trails from the Old to the New Worlds so diverse, so divergent and so divinely - or diabolically - funny.'
AMANDA HOPKINSON, 'Independent on Sunday'

Author Biography

Holland's most famous and bestselling author. In Babylon is his third novel.