A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters: A Novel

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989. First American Edition. Hard Cover. Near Fine/Near Fine. 6x1x8. First American edition. Jacket lightly toned. Top page ridge faintly foxed. 1989 Hard Cover. 307 pp. 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.