Traversée des temps (Crossing Time),

 

In Traversée des temps (Crossing Time), Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt has set himself a momentous challenge: to tell the history of humanity in the form of a novel. Scroll through the centuries, embrace epochs, feel the shocks: Yuval Noah Harari meets Alexandre Dumas! Schmitt has been developing this project for over thirty years. Bringing together scientific, medical, religious and philosophical knowledge and creating strong, tender and very real characters, he propels readers from one world to the next, from Prehistory to our own time and from evolutions to revolutions, while the past illuminates the present.

Paradise Lost is the first leg of this unique journey with Noam as its narrator-hero. Born 8,000 years ago in a lakeside village deep in a paradisal natural world, he confronts the tragedies of his clan the day he meets Noura, a capricious and fascinating woman who reveals him to himself. He is faced with a famous catastrophe: the Flood. Not only does the Flood place Noam-Noah on the stage of History, it determines his whole life. Will he be the only man to traverse the centuries ?