Iain Pears: The Dream Of Scipio (USA 2003)

From the Publisher:
In The Dream of Scipio, "Pears's finest book yet" (The Boston Globe), the acclaimed author of An Instance of the Fingerpost intertwines three intellectual mysteries, three love stories -- and three of the darkest moments in human history. United by a classical text called "The Dream of Scipio," three men struggle to find refuge for their hearts and minds from the madness that surrounds them... in the final days of the Roman Empire, in the grim years of the Black Death, and in the direst hours of World War II.

Iain Pears: The Dream Of Scipio. Riverhead Books, ISBN: 157322202X (June, 2003), 416 p., $16.00.

Iain Pears: The Dream Of Scipio (UK 2003)

From the Publisher:
Set in Provence at three different critical moments of Western Civilisation - the collapse of the Roman Empire in the fifth century, the Black Death in the fourteenth, and the Second World War in the twentieth - The Dream of Scipio follows the fortunes of three men, Manlius Hippomanes, a Gallic aristocrat obsessed with the preservation of Roman civilisation, Olivier de Noyen, a poet, and Julien Barneuve, an intellectual who joins the Vichy government. The story of each man is woven through the narrative, linked by the classical text that gives the book its title, and by each man's love for an extraordinary woman. Dense, dark, erudite and yet, like An Instance of the Fingerpost, utterly compelling, The Dream of Scipio confirms Iain Pears as one of Britain's most imaginative novelists.

Iain Pears: The Dream Of Scipio. Vintage, ISBN: 0099284588 (April, 2003), 393 p., £6.99.

Iain Pears: The Dream Of Scipio (UK 2002)

From the Publisher:
The Dream of Scipio, lain Pears' first mainstream novel since An Instance of the Fingerpost, is a work of astonishing ambition that appeals equally to the head and heart. It is set in Provence at three different critical moments of Western Civilisation - the collapse of the Roman Empire in the fifth century, the Black Death in the fourteenth, and the Second World War in the twentieth - and follows the fortunes of three men, Manlius Hippomenes, a Gallic aristocrat obsessed with the preservation of Roman civilisation, Guilaume Noyen, a poet, and Julien Barneuve, an intellectual who joins the Vichy government.The story of each man is woven through the narrative, linked by the classical text that gives the book its title, and by each man's love for an extraordinary woman. Dense, dark, erudite and yet, like The Instance of the Fingerpost, utterly compelling, The Dream of Scipio confirms lain Pears as one of Britain's most imaginative novelists.

Iain Pears: The Dream Of Scipio. Jonathan Cape, ISBN: 0224060163 (April, 2003), 393 p., £17.99.