Three narratives, centuries apart; five characters who begin as strangers; and one, or not even that, ancient Greek comedy attributed to Diogenes; are all weaved together to produce a memorable novel.
In the past, mid-fifteenth century Europe, a young girl named Anna is learning to embroider (badly) in a Constantinople sweatshop. She is more interested in the world outside and finds a way to learn Greek, using the skill to earn a crust by raiding a long-abandoned library and selling on the texts. However, approaching the city is the Sultan’s vast army, intent on conquest. With it, conscripted as an oxen driver, is young Omeir, disfigured and shunned, but devoted to his oxen.
In the present, in a local library in Lakeport, Idaho, an old man named Zeno is taking a group of schoolkids through a dress rehearsal of a play he has cobbled together. Downstair, Seymour, a troubled teenager, lurks with a bomb in his rucksack.
In the future, a young girl named Konstance lives with her family and similar volunteers on the Argos, a spaceship on a generations-long mission to a new beginning on a planet of a distant star. All the mission’s needs are met by an all-knowing AI, going by the name of Sybil.
The link, initially and tenuously, is the Diogenes text. Anna steals it in Constantinople and keeps it for herself. It passes through Omeir’s hands and is lost for centuries. Once rediscovered and shared on-line, Zeno makes his amateur attempt at translation / reconstruction. Seymour and Konstance both get involved (to say how would be a spoiler), and the text’s importance to all their lives increasingly emerges.
It is well written and cleverly constructed in narratives spliced in terms of time and space. The nearly six hundred pages race by in engaging prose, full of depth as each character’s back story and future is revealed with compassion and insight.
Up there with the
best reads of recent years.
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