This is a landmark in science writing that resurrects from the vaults of neglect the polymath Jerome Cardano, a Milanese of the sixteenth century. Who is he? A gambler and blasphemer, inventor and chancer, plagued by demons and anxieties, astrologer to kings, emperors, and popes, and the unacknowledged discoverer of the mathematical foundations of quantum physics.
At the start of the twentieth century, on the edge of the Russian Empire, a family prospers, thanks to a recipe for hot chocolate that bewitches its drinkers. But this chocolate carries a bitter - some say cursed aftertaste. Through the years, across expanses of longing and loss, we witness generations of this remarkable family as they struggle and thrive, and live and die in the red century.