Welcome to Litsy!

Three narratives, set in the fifth, fourteenth, and twentieth centuries, all revolving around an ancient text and each with a love story at its centre, are the elements of this brilliantly ingenious novel, a follow-up to the international bestseller An Instance of the Fingerpost. Now Ian Pears returns with a greatly anticipated novel, so expertly imagined and perfectly constructed the author himself describes it as �a complexity.� The centuries are the 5th (the final days of the Roman Empire); the 14th (the years of the Plague � the Black Death); and the 20th (World War II). The setting for each is the same � Provence � and each has at its heart a love story. The narratives intertwine seamlessly, and what joins them thematically is an ancient text � �The Dream of Scipio� � a work of neo-Platonism that poses timeless philosophical questions. What is the obligation of the individual in a society under siege? What is the role of learning when civilization itself is threatened, whether by acts of man or nature? Does virtue lie more in engagement or in neutrality? �Power without wisdom is tyranny; wisdom without power is pointless,� warns one of Pears�s characters. The Dream of Scipio is a bona fide novel of ideas, a dazzling feat of storytelling, fiction for our times. From the Trade Paperback edition.