Book excerpt: Beyond Berggasse is a story that takes the reader deep into the heady world of war, Zionism, salons, writers, artists, sexual awakening and the randomness of tragedy and redemption that follow. In late nineteenth century Vienna, Moritz, a young man from a well-to-do Jewish family, lives in the shadow of his older brother. Afflicted by a birthmark which in ancient times would have seen him left out for the wolves, he tries to retreat into a world of reading and writing. But unable to escape the ‘target on his face’, as his father calls it, Moritz is forced by his impatient nation into war. Beyond Berggasse has a dual structure. It starts in 1898 in Vienna and continues until the end of the First World War before jumping to the modern day, when we meet the grandchildren of the brothers from Vienna. Full of rich details about a time of profound change and upheaval in Vienna’s cultural life, we meet such luminaries as Klimt, Mahler, Zweig, Herzl, Schiele and many more in a blend of historical fact and imaginative recreation.