Edmond Music, Catholic priest and director of Beale Hall research institute, has a secret: he doesn't believe in God. In fact Edmond Music isn't even Edmond Music. He's Edmond Music, French child of Hungarian parents - and a Jew.

Alan Isler was born in London in 1834. His first novel, The Prince of West End Avenue, was acclaimed on both sides of the Atlantic. In America it won the National Jewish Book Award and was one of the five fiction nominees for the 1994 National Book Critics Circle Award. In Britain it won the Jewish Quarterly Fiction Award. He is also the author of another novel, Kraven Images, and a collection of novellas, The Bacon Fancier.