The novel by the popular Dutch writer and journalist Herman Koch was awarded the Reader's Prize in the Netherlands in 2009. Since then, it has been translated into more than two dozen languages and brought the author worldwide fame: to date, over a million copies of the book have been sold. Its plot, which at first seems simple, is confined to a strict time frame: it is just one evening in a fashionable restaurant. Two brothers and their wives came there to have dinner and discuss something. Paul Lohmann is a former history teacher, his brother Serge is a future prime minister, and both have teenage children. What begins as a banal table conversation gradually develops into drama, and terrible family secrets emerge to the surface one after another. With each new change of dishes, the tension only increases...