It also chronicles the story of his grandfather Michaelis and grandmother Lucia's lives in their rural Greek village in the years surrounding World War II.

[3] The novel is structured in chapters alternately focusing on a realist depiction Isaac's travels in contemporary Europe and a fantastical representation of his grandparents' lives in their rural World War II era village in Greece.

Dead Europe opens with a flashback of protagonist Isaac Raftis' childhood, when his mother first told him about "the Jews" and how every year, at Christmas they "drank the blood of the sacrificed child.

Lucia, driven mad by the murder of her son by her mother in law now informs on rebel activity in the village to the local Colonel of the Greek Army.

He prowls through the streets of London searching for victims, eventually murdering and feeding on an American tourist, before being joined by the spectral boy who lays alongside him.

Together they fly to England to join him and Reveka recognises that her son's affliction is caused by the curse and feeds him her blood to sustain him before taking him home to Melbourne.

This is foregrounded Tsiolkas's interview with Catherine Padmore when he describes his desire to write a book that "explores anti-Semitism in my world and the complexity of how we deal with it and what it means for our sense of self.

"[19] Padmore argues that this focused point of view denies the reader the ability to look away, making them identify with and become complicit in Isaac's actions and thoughts, therefore preventing them the reflex of "saying the racist is the other.

[22] The novel critiques the apparent lack of action being taken to rectify the social and economic inequalities faced by these exploited groups, and in doing so posits that this underclass may actually be necessary to the functioning of global capitalism.

"[24] Tsiolkas also suggests that in addition to exploiting the vulnerable, global capitalism has also helped to create an egocentric, antisocial and possibly even predatory form of consumerism that "sees other people as objects, resources or props in the life of the libidinal individual.

[26] Tsiolkas also felt a strong interest in and connection to anti-Semitism due to it being, "the first racism I ever learnt... part of my heritage, the dark side of my own character" which compelled him to explore it in his own writing.

[27] Tsiolkas was interested in writing about the relationship between these phenomena but upon realising the level of scholarship, research and academic rigour this would require, he instead moved towards fiction as a means of disseminating and exploring these ideas, and thus the novel Dead Europe was conceived.

[28] As evidence these critics have highlighted characters such as Syd the pornographer, who "embodies the worst stereotypes about Jewish culture and its relationship with mercantilism", and Gerry the people smuggler, who callously exploits migrant workers in his warehouse to for his own personal gain, as examples rather than interrogations, of anti-Semitism.

[29] Additionally, the anti-Semitic opinions espoused by protagonist Isaac have been criticised as being seemingly representative of Tsiolkas's own beliefs, as Robert Manne described it, "are we to assume there is a complete disjunction in character and sensibility between the thirty-something gay Greek-Australian photographer, the novel's narrator Isaac... and the thirty-something gay Greek-Australian novelist, Christos Tsiolkas, who is the author of Dead Europe?