Sebi, our teenage hero and narrator in Charles Lewinsky’s epos, is not exactly tailored to the rough medieval world he’s born into: gifted with youthful wisdom, he is more of a storyteller than a warhorse. With these qualities, he hardly meets the demands in the rural Swiss village in 1313. However from Halfbeard, a stranger from a distant region, the boy discovers both the good and the bad in humanity – and does come into his own as he dedicates himself to the power of narration: the truth is in the telling.

Louis Chabos grew up in a children’s home in Milan. After his battlefield experiences during Napoleon’s Russian campaign, he wants only one thing: to settle down to a comfortable life at long last and build a family. In Grisons, in eastern Switzerland, he finds the small piece of happiness he has hoped for. But he squanders it when his desperate urge to track down his unknown father lures him to Paris, where he seeks his destiny amid the splendour and the misery.

After a teacher is suspended over an affair with one of his pupils, he retreats to a French village. It seems an idyllic setting, but appearances can be deceiving. A building project opens up ancient graves, and before the outsider knows what's hit him, he's embroiled in the intrigue. A web of crimes from long-gone days and very-much-alive intrigue soon unfurls.

The actor and director Kurt Gerron was once a star - and now he's just one amongst many concentration camp inmates. In Theresienstadt, he has to prove his proficiency one more time, by staging the existence there as happy Jewish life. Gerron sees himself faced with a momentous decision.

The latest novel by the acclaimed author of the international bestselling novel Melnitz is a book about the power of language, both philosophical and playful.

Being a stutterer, Johannes Hosea Stärckle trusts entirely in the power of the written word and uses it ruthlessly, in self-defence and for his career. A fraud case – he calls it a writerly carelessness – puts him in prison. Using letters, avowals and invented stories, he tries to win over the people who have a say over his life behind bars: the prison chaplain, the drugs boss, his publisher.

After a sumptuous Christmas dinner, the Pope receives a visit from the Devil, who whisks him off in a red Ferrari and advises him to restore the Church’s ailing finances using sponsorships. Was it a dream? Possibly. But next morning, the world looks different somehow. God, too, decides to pay the Earth a visit when he realises humanity is busy demolishing his creation. Can he save the day? Well, he’ll give it a shot.

Goethe returns from Switzerland to find himself back home in Weimar, suffering from writer’s block. It doesn’t matter how quiet his young son August is, or how lovingly his wife Christiane looks after him. Ultimately, it’s his brother-in-law, Christian August Vulpius – also a writer, much despised by Goethe as a hack – who proves an unlikely source of aid. Aid that Goethe does not want yet desperately needs.

What of his own life does a writer smuggle into his books, either consciously or subconsciously? Charles Lewinsky sets out to discover the answer to this question, and is amazed by how much personal material has inadvertently crept into his novels. This gives him the opportunity, through anecdotes and confessions, to remember both the highs and lows - as they are reflected in his own work.

1871. Cattle-dealer Solomon Meijer has made a reputation for himself in Endingen, a rare Swiss town in which Jews are allowed to reside. He leads a largely untroubled life, but this is set to end when he answers a knock at the door in the middle of the night. On the doorstep stands his young distant cousin, Janki, half-dead and begging for refuge. The pitiful figure is invited in and given a coveted place in the bosom of the family, but when Janki recovers and regains his ambition and his fine looks, he will change the Meijer family's lives for generations to come . . .