Former cinema camera director Julius Sewell journeys across Europe with his family to his sister's wedding in Rome. But this will be an unusual road trip. For one thing, Julius has been in an institution and has only just been released to travel. And then there is his family. This is Easter 1934 and Julius' stepfather and mother are keen members of Oswald Mosley's new party, the British Union of Fascists. One of Julius' half-sisters is in studying in Munich, where she dreams of meeting meet her idol, Adolf Hitler. Another half-sister is a member of the British Communist Party, and is determined to wreck the approaching wedding, because the groom is a rising figure in Italy's Fascist regime.As the family motors south, to Paris, across Nazi Germany - taking in a bus tour to Dachau concentration camp - and through Mussolini's Italy to Rome, gathering relatives and a stray dog along the way, Julius' mental stability will be put sorely to the test, as will be the sanity of his relatives.

Matthew Kneale is the author of eight novels and two works of non-fiction. His debut novel, Whore Banquets, won the Somerset Maugham Award, Sweet Thames won John Llewellyn Rhys, and English Passengers, shortlisted for the Man Booker and Miles Franklin, won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award in 2000. His non-fiction book, Rome: A History in Seven Sackings, was a Waterstones Book of the Month. For the last two decades he has lived in Rome with his wife and two children.