NEW FROM ENVELOPEBOOKS: When Professor Arthur Lash takes his American family back to Vienna in 1960 to visit his father, the comfortable assumptions of their life in upstate New York are suddenly overturned by the stresses of foreign travel.

ANOTHER BRILLIANT NOVEL FROM ENVELOPEBOOKS

Professor Arthur Lash, born Artur Lasch in pre-war Austria, takes his American wife and their three sons back to Vienna, in 1960, to see how well his father is rebuilding his life after regaining the factory stolen from him when Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany in 1938.

For Arthur, the journey helps him re-establish his links with the city he was brought up in; for the rest of his family, the new horizons of travel awaken a range of other emotions, all watched over by their wise but needy and uninvited travelling companion, Mrs Woodbine, the family nanny..

In this, his stunning third novel, Michael Ladner draws on his own background as a child of the generation of exiled European academics who found a new home in America.

A perfect book club read.