Through history

is a Cypriot, telling us about his wedding day, when his new wife drowned in a tsunami. In the next chapter, however, he is a Guatemalan, in mourning for a bride who was killed by a falling stone during an earthquake.

This may sound confusing but in fact the story is easy to follow and I rapidly became immersed in it. One quickly becomes used to characters reappearing under different names, but always beginning with the same letter.

The Narrator’s father, for example, is a very consistent and well-drawn character.Whatever land and era he’s in, the father spends much of his time despairing of his soppy son who prefers artistic pursuits to fighting – which often lead to memorable encounters, whether making a dress for his sister’s wedding to Attila the Hun, touring the Vatican with Michelangelo, or being seduced by Lady Macbeth.

What prevents the book from becoming too disjointed is the central thread of a revenge plot, as the Narrator vows to track down a former friend who betrayed his family.

However, this story arc comes to an end a couple of centuries too early, and latterly the book is more episodic, with the Narrator tending to be a witness to events – a terrible miscarriage of justice in the trenches of the GreatWar, for instance – rather than being the story’s protagonist.

There is a lot less subtlety in the final sections, too, as Boyne lays into President Trump.

Still, it’s an original way of looking at how humans shape history and vice versa and, at its best, this novel combines the pleasures of good old-fashioned storytelling with the excitement of finding a writer who makes you look at the world anew.