Penguin Books Ltd

In 1939, five-year-old Jacques Austerlitz is sent to England on a Kindertransport and placed with foster parents. This childless couple promptly erase from the boy all knowledge of his identity and he grows up ignorant of his past.

From Hitler's vast Chancellery to Saddam Hussein's Mother of all Battles mosque, from Olympic stadiums to Donald Trump's excesses, the author examines the murky relationship between buildings, money and politics, revealing the power of architecture - and the architecture of power.

We flatter ourselves about the nature of free will and yet the most enormous forces - biological, physical, metaphysical - constrain our every action. This title draws together the religious, philosophic and fantastical traditions that question the very idea of human freedom.