For a century and a half, the vandals, whose name became, as a result of malicious propaganda, a symbol of senseless destruction, played a decisive role in world history. They came from Scandinavia, lived in Silesia, Southern Germany, Burgundy, Spain, and Africa. They shocked the ancient world, captured Carthage and brought the Roman Empire to the brink of destruction, but were themselves destroyed by it. A new book by Wolfgang Akunov is dedicated to the history of the unprecedented rise and fall of a slandered people.