The Brothel in Rosenstrasse

An old man remembers. Bickering and exasperated by his aged man-servant, the past comes flooding powerfully back. Alexandra, his Alice, sixteen-year-old mistress, avid for all experience. Their time together in fin de siècle Mirenburg, architectural treasure house where Romanesque, Gothic and Baroque jostle and complement.

Time and place mark the heyday of high European style, gracious, mannered and opulent. The influences, artistic and intellectual, collide, churn together: Vienna, Paris, St Petersburg, Southern dolce fa niente and Northern realpolitik.

City and society, symbolised by the flamboyantly discreet brothel in Rosenstrasse, are doomed, but Alice and the prodigal Rickhardt von Bek play out their hungrily sexual affair while civil war closes inexorably in on them.

Michael Moorcock has created a richly detailed imaginative world that will seduce and delight particularly the many, many people who enjoyed Gloriana and Byzantium Endures.