'An alternative history tour-de-force. Epic, intense and authentic. Lavie Tidhar reboots the 20th century with spies and superheroes battling for mastery - and the results are electric' - Tom Harper, author of The Orpheus Descent

For seventy years they guarded the British Empire. Oblivion and Fogg, inseparable friends, bound together by a shared fate. Until one night in Berlin, in the aftermath of the Second World War, and a secret that tore them apart.

But there must always be an account . . . and the past has a habit of catching up to the present.

Now, recalled to the Retirement Bureau from which no one can retire, Fogg and Oblivion must face up to a past of terrible war and unacknowledged heroism - a life of dusty corridors and secret rooms, of furtive meetings and blood-stained fields - to answer one last, impossible question:

What makes a hero?

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Praise for VIOLENT CENTURY:

'Vintage Lavie, and also I think his most fully accomplished novel yet. If Nietzche had written an X-Men storyline whilst high on mescaline, it might have read something like VIOLENT CENTURY' - Adam Roberts, author of Jack Glass

'A big, ambitious book that manages to deliver' - Glen Mehn

'An elegiac espionage adventure that demands a second reading' - Metro

'Provides an insight into what it takes to be human, and what can happen when we lay that humanity aside. It's a powerful novel, which will no doubt reward rereading' - Sci-Fi bulletin