Believing they were being taken to a better camp, Belgrade's Jews would climb into the truck with a sense of relief. Mainly women, children and the elderly, they expected a long and uncomfortable trip but, after crossing the border, their journey would come to an abrupt end. Here the drivers would get out and attach a hose from the exhaust to the back of the truck-Over the course of a few months in 1942 the Nazis systematically exterminated the majority of Serbia's Jews using carbon monoxide and specially designed trucks. The only information the narrator of this bleakly comic novel can find about the summer when his relatives disappeared is the names of the truck drivers: G-tz and Meyer. During his research he becomes fascinated by the unknowable characters and daily lives of these men. But his imagination proves a dangerous force, and his obsession with the past threatens to overwhelm him.

David Albahari was born in Serbia in 1948. He founded, and was for many years the editor in chief of, Pismo, a magazine of world literature. He is also an accomplished translator of Anglo-American literature. He lives in Calgary, Canada.

'A beautiful, soul-searching and genuinely tragi-comic novel' Daily Telegraph