Highly praised when first published in 1960, Anna Teller portrays the saga of a Jewish-Hungarian family through three quarters of a century in Europe and the United States. The 74-year old Anna, always known to her family as 'the General', ran a farm and a mill in Hungary after her husband's death, endured the worst of the Nazi occupation, and fought the Russians during the failed Hungarian revolt of 1956. The core of the novel lies in Anna's stormy relationship with her son, fuelled by mutual guilt at the death of relatives in concentration camps. The novel has the powerful emotional resonance shared by the best of family sagas.