A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters

Book excerpt: A “playful, witty, and entertaining” book (The New York Times Book Review) that offers an exhilarating vision of the world, starting with the voyage of Noah's ark and ending with a sneak preview of heaven—from the bestselling, Booker Prize-winning author of The Sense of an Ending. It's a hilariously revisionist account of Noah's ark, narrated by a passenger who doesn't appear in Genesis. It's a sneak preview of heaven. It encompasses the stories of a cruise ship hijacked by terrorists and of woodworms tried for blasphemy in sixteenth-century France. It explores the relationship of fact to fabulation and the antagonism between history and love. In short, A History of the World in 10½ Chapters is a grandly ambitious and inventive work of fiction, in the traditions of Joyce and Calvino, from the author of the widely acclaimed Flaubert's Parrot.