... challenge the veracity of almost every element of the narrative. In the second half of the novel, we meet the author of the retold myth, Jewish poet Solomon Memel, who used the boar hunt as a metaphor for his time in the Greek resistance during World War II. We also discover that the author of the strident footnotes is a childhood friend who publishes an unauthorised annotated version of Memel's modern classic, and accuses Memel of faking his time in the resistance. Characters, actions and motifs echo through the narrative from pre-Homeric Greece to 1930s Romania, 1940s Greece, and 1950s and 1960s Paris. As difficult as it is to describe the book it was much harder to write. Most writers of historical fiction profess an abiding love of research, but Norfolk takes it to extremes that would unnerve the doughtiest historian. He once combed the archives to find out what ...

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