In late nineteenth century Vienna, Moritz, a young man from a well-to-do Jewish family, lives in the shadow of his older brother. Afflicted by a birthmark which in ancient times would have seen him left out for the wolves, he tries to retreat into a world of reading and writing. But unable to escape the 'target on his face', as his father calls it, Moritz is forced by his impatient nation into war. A story that takes the reader deep into the heady world of war, Zionism, salons, writers, artists, sexual awakening and the randomness of tragedy and redemption that follow.