Los templos del júbilo

1926. England is still recovering from the Great War, and London has become the center of a new and wild nightlife. In Soho clubs lords rub shoulders with budding actresses, foreign dignitaries with gangsters, and it's not hard to find girls charging a shilling for a dance. The queen of all this glittering world is the famous Nellie Coker, a ruthless and ambitious woman who does not hesitate to do whatever it takes to ensure that her six children prosper, and among them her enigmatic eldest son, Niven, who has forged his character in the heat of the Battle of the Somme. But success always makes enemies, and Nellie's empire has to contend with threats from within as well as from without, because beneath the tinsel of debauchery in that Soho lurks a dark side, a world into which it's all too easy to disappear. With that uniquely Dickensian style, Kate Atkinson creates a magnificent cast of characters for an utterly captivating novel that tells us about the insecurity and mutability of life in a world where nothing is as it seems.