ZHIVKA D. SPASICH, seamstress
Dr SVETISLAV SIMONOVICH, doctor to King Peter
King PETER I
Sergeant DIMITRIYE LEKICH, refugee
VLADISLAV PETKOVICH DIS, accursed Serbian poet
Major LYUBOMIR VULOVICH, sentenced to death
Major RADOYICA TATICH, artillery
Dr ARCHIBALD REISS, forensic scientist and writer
ALEXANDER, Crown Prince and later regent
Four heroic lieutenants with pocket watches
Austria-Hungary
MEHMED GRAHO, Sarajevo pathologist
TIBOR VERES, reporter for the Pester Lloyd
TIBOR NÉMETH, Hungarian soldier
SVETOZAR BOROEVICH VON BOINA, field marshal
HEINRICH AUFSCHNEIDER, psychoanalyst
BÉLA DURÁNCI, Munich actor
A VON B, spy
MARKO MURK, Croatian volunteer
CHARLES I, the last Austrian emperor
FRANZ HARTMANN, occultist from Munich
HUGO VOLLRATH, theosophist from Munich
KARL BRANDLER-PRACHT, theosophist from Leipzig
ANDOR PRAGER, young pianist
France
JEAN COCTEAU
LUCIEN GUIRAND DE SCEVOLA, scene painter and stage designer
GERMAIN D’ESPARBÈS, soldier
STANISLAW WITKIEWICZ, Polish refugee
GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE
OLD LIBION, proprietor of the Café de la Rotonde
OLD COMBES, proprietor of the Closerie des Lilas
KIKI DE MONTPARNASSE, volunteer and model
PIERRE ALBERT-BIROT, producer of postcards
FERRY PISANO, war correspondent
Fifty heroes of Verdun
FRITZ JOUBERT DUQUESNE, spy
MATA HARI, spy
United Kingdom
EDWIN MCDERMOTT, bass from Edinburgh
FATHER DONOVAN, Scottish chaplain
OSWALD RAYNER, assassin
FLORRIE FORDE, music-hall singer
SIDNEY REILLY, spy
ANNABEL WALDEN, nurse
Germany
HANS-DIETER HUIS, opera singer
FRITZ KRUPP, Zeppelin bombardier and later pilot
STEFAN HOLM, soldier
LILIAN SMITH (SCHMIDT), music-hall singer
FRITZ HABER, chemist
WALTHER SCHWIEGER, submarine commander
HANS HENZE, right-handed pianist and left-handed poet
PAUL WITTGENSTEIN, left-handed invalid pianist
ALEXANDER WITTEK, architecture student
MANFRED VON RICHTHOFEN, pilot
Fifty heroes of Verdun
ADOLF HITLER, lance corporal of the 16th Bavarian Infantry (List Regiment)
Turkey
MEHMED YILDIZ, Istanbul spice trader
CAM ZULAD BEY, Istanbul policeman
Russia
SERGEI CHESTUKHIN, neurosurgeon
LIZA CHESTUKHINA, Sergei’s wife
GRAND DUKE NICHOLAS
SERGEI VORONIN, Menshevik, soldier
BORIS DMITRIEVICH RIZANOV, soldier
VLADIMIR SUKHOMLINOV, Governor-General of Kiev
YEKATERINA SUKHOMLINOVA, Vladimir’s wife
COUNT VLADIMIR FREDERIKS, First Secretary of the Court
ILYA EHRENBURG
NICHOLAS II, the last Russian tsar
Tsaritsa ALEXANDRA
KARL RADEK, Bolshevik
YURI YURIEV, acclaimed actor
LEON TROTSKY, Bolshevik negotiator in Brest-Litovsk
A fortune-teller travelling in the trains of the October Revolution
Italy
GIORGIO DE CHIRICO
Note to readers: please be aware that in keeping with the standard practice of the period the novel is set, all Serbian names have been anglicised in order to allow easier pronunciation for the English reader. Major city names remain in the original.
1914
THE YEAR OF THE PATHOLOGIST
Suspects arrested in Sarajevo following the assasination, 1914
PROLOGUE: TWO REVOLVER SHOTS
The Great War began for Dr Mehmed Graho when he was least expecting it, just when he was told that ‘two important bodies’ would be brought to the mortuary in that June heatwave. But for Dr Graho, hunched and ageing but still hale, with a bald head and prominent flat pate, no bodies were more important than others. All the corpses which came under his knife were waxy pale, with cadaverously gaping mouths, often with eyes which no one had had time to close, or had not dared to, which now bulged and stared away into space, striving with their lifeless pupils to catch one last ray of sun.
But that did not disturb him. Ever since 1874, he had placed his round glasses on his nose, donned his white coat, put on long gloves and begun his work at the Sarajevo mortuary, where he removed hearts from within chests, felt broken ribs for signs of police torture and searched the stomachs of the deceased for swallowed fish bones and the remains of the last meal.
Now the ‘important bodies’ arrived, and the pathologist still hadn’t heard what had happened out in the streets. He didn’t know that the Archduke’s car had been backing out of Franz Joseph Street and that there, from out of the crowd on the corner near the Croatia Insurance building, a little fellow had fired two revolver shots at the heir to the Austrian throne and the Duchess of Hohenberg. At first, the bodyguards thought the royal couple was unharmed and it looked as if the Archduke had only turned and glanced away in the other direction, to the assembled crowd; the Duchess resembled a doll in a Vienna shop window, and a moment later blood gushed from her noble breast; Franz Ferdinand’s mouth also filled with blood, which trickled down the right-hand side of his orderly, black-dyed moustache. Only a little later was it established that the important persons had been hit, and within fifteen minutes the male of the couple had become an ‘important body’. Half an hour after that, the important female person hadn’t awoken from her state of unconsciousness, lying in the umbrage of the Governor’s residence, and she too was declared an ‘important body’.
Now the two important bodies had arrived, and no one had told Dr Graho who they were. But one glance at the male corpse’s uniform with its breast full of medals and one look at the long,