Baudolino – Umberto Eco

What happens

Baudolino is an itinerant liar with leonine hair, a love of storytelling, a wry sense of humour and a big heart. The story is supposedly narrated by him. It is framed as a conversation between Baudolino and Niketas, which takes place amid the sack of Constantinople in the 13h century.

Baudolino describes his life, from his beginnings as an Italian peasant to his journey to the mythical kingdom of Prester John. Along the way he takes in war between the medieval Italian city-states, adoption by the Emperor Frederick 1, becomes the real author

of the correspondence between Abelard and Heloise, meets blemmys, skiapods and unicorns, and falls in love with a Gnostic nympth. The novel is a funny, absorbing and erudite rampage through medieval history, literature, mythology and theology, as told by a narrator whose word is all the more believable for being known to be unreliable.

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The Year Of Our War – Steph Swainston

What happens:

The story is set in the Fourlands, an alter-world with a climate a bit like northern Europe. It is narrated by Comet Jant Shira, a drug-addicted cross between two humanoid races and the only person in his world who can fly. He’s a member of the Castle Circle, an elite group of immortals whose job it is to protect ordinary humans from the depredations of giant, hostile insects that come from who knows where.

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