From the author of The Director, one of The New York Times's top 10 books of 2025, a dryly comic historical novel in which power, absurdity, and Europe's history of casual brutality is on display in a single day at the 1884 Berlin Conference. An unhappily married Austrian diplomat burdened by debt from a past affair unwittingly becomes an influential voice amongst European leaders convened to discuss regulating European colonization and trade in Africa, all while his private crisis of embezzlement comes to a head.