At the beginning of the twentieth century, Europe seemed to stand at the height of an imperial golden age. The great powers were evenly matched, colonialism and industrial civilization were flourishing, and society widely believed that order and progress would last forever. Yet beneath the glittering surface, class tensions, imperial rivalries, gender oppression, and conflicts between old and new ideas were already gathering like underground currents. The seeds of an age of upheaval had been sown. Six families from Britain, Germany, Russia, France, the United States, and Italy serve as the story’s protagonists: a declining British aristocratic family, German industrial workers, Russian revolutionaries, an Italian family struggling to survive between rival forces, an idealistic American politician, and French artists devoted to humanist ideals. Each carries simple hopes and believes that individual effort can defy fate, pursuing dignity, justice, and human warmth in a changing age. The assassination in Sarajevo ignites the First World War, and industrial warfare crushes the customs and order of the old world. Countless people become sacrifices in the struggle for hegemony; the flames of war also force women out of the home, spurring them to awaken further amid their suffering. The end of the First World War does not mean the end of hardship. Germany, Russia, Austria-Hungary, and other traditional empires fall one after another, Europe’s old aristocratic system crumbles, and the age of capital begins. Most of the beautiful, naïve ideals cherished by an entire generation are shattered by the flood of reality. The changing fortunes of these six families reveal the social divisions, disillusionment, and transformation of human nature from 1910 to 1923, telling an epic story of an old civilization’s demise and the painful birth of a new world. History does not bend to individual ideals, yet through each cycle of destruction and reconstruction, it drives humanity and civilization ever forward.
