✅ Status: Read (twenty-odd times) — and re-reading it right now

📚 Historical fiction · Linked short stories · around 225 pages · 1985

🇪🇸 Amazon ES · Goodreads (I haven’t found an English or German edition)

This book has been in my life longer than almost any other. I first read it when I was 8 or 9, in a collection of brown-covered Planeta books that my mother kept at home. I loved it. Since then, I must have re-read it, no joke, twenty-odd times, especially as a child and a teenager, when I re-read books like mad.

I recently tracked it down again, and for less, on AbeBooks (psst, one of my best-kept secrets: here you go). I bought it, and here I am once more. I’ve read the first two stories and I’m rationing it, because I want it to last.

The story (spoiler-free)

Hans Weber is a German professor of prehistory. One day, he has a hunting accident and ends up with a bullet lodged in his head. The operation damages part of his brain and leaves him with something very odd: he loses the ability to forget. And he starts remembering his past lives. Four million years’ worth of them, from the first human beings to the beginning of the Christian era. Sometimes he’s a man, sometimes a woman, but almost always an ordinary person of their time.

Each memory is a short story, independent of the others. The only thing that links them is him.

What the reading community says

Opinions are quite divided: on Goodreads it sits at around 3.7 out of 5, with a little over a hundred ratings. Those who like it love the idea, the leaps through history and how vivid the earliest memories are. Some say you don’t even need to believe in reincarnation to enjoy it. Those who aren’t convinced find the second half heavy going, feel that some stories end abruptly, find the style a touch pompous, or lose track of who is speaking in each memory. In other words: it’s not for everyone, and it’s better to know that beforehand.

What I actually thought

It’s one of those books that left a mark on me, and these are the three stories that stuck:

The one about fear. It’s the first in the book: the memory of a tree-dwelling child, from the days when we still lived in the trees. It has a line that never leaves me: “Beyond my fear, there is nothing”. I loved it.

The Bronze Age girl. If memory serves, it’s set in the Bronze Age, and what I like is how well it tells things from the little girl’s point of view. It’s the arrival of the legendary King Minos, bringing bronze from other parts of Europe. That part fascinated me.

Aspasia of Miletus. I discovered her here. Aspasia, Pericles’ lover: I was fascinated by her intelligence, her kindness, her heart, her humanity. And through her I discovered the world of the hetairai, the courtesans, a subject that has had me hooked for as long as I can remember. So much so that one of the projects I had in mind was to write a book about the different kinds of courtesans throughout history.

That said, I didn’t enjoy it all equally. Other stories I remember as very dense and heavy going, and I don’t know whether that will happen again now that I’m re-reading it. Just because it’s one of my favourite books doesn’t mean it’s for everyone; you’ve seen what people say above. But it still hooks me, and that’s exactly why I’m rationing it.

Is this book for you?

For you, if you like history told from the inside, through ordinary people. Also if you enjoy short stories and don’t mind each one being a world of its own. You don’t need to believe in reincarnation, don’t worry. Maybe not for you if you’re after a continuous plot or neatly rounded endings, because the stories sometimes stop abruptly.

Fun fact

Torcuato Luca de Tena was a journalist (he was editor of ABC), a member of the Real Academia Española and a Premio Planeta winner. His greatest successes were Edad prohibida and Los renglones torcidos de Dios. And yes, my edition was from Planeta.

My rating

⭐⭐⭐⭐ (3.7 out of 5)

Honestly, I’d put it somewhere between 3.5 and 4, so, for once, I’m going to agree with Goodreads and give it a 3.7. The first stories I adore, and others felt dense and heavy going. Who knows whether the rating will change when I finish this re-read.

Have you read it? Which story stayed with you? Tell me below. 💬