A breath-takingly clever novel about power and loss from the author of The Great Blue Yonder. Ernst Eckmann is an artist. He specialises in the art of the impossible - objects so tiny, so perfect, that they cannot be real. A tiny camel passes through the eye of a real needle; a pyramid is carved into a grain of sugar; a tiny polar bear, barely visible to the naked eye, sits on an iceberg of salt. Eckmann works in silence, carving between heartbeats. Christopher Malian loves Eckmann's sculptures. He visits the gallery often on his way home from school to marvel at the perfect miniatures beneath their glass domes. Until one day, the impossible happens - and Christopher sees a sculpture so real that it moves, dances, even seems to breathe...