Halfway through Claire Messud’s sprawling new novel, the 31-year-old François reflects on his grand aspirations: “He wanted to experience everything, from the rocky iguana-covered outcrops of the Galápagos to the sumptuous palaces of Jaipur, from a gelatinous platter of steamed sea cucumber in a restaurant in Kuala Lumpur or a tear-inducing curry in Macao to the Inca ruins of the Yucatán Peninsula, from the ancient churches carved in rock at Lalibela to the dusk falling over Mount Olympus to the sun rising behind the rusty monolith of Ayers Rock as it loomed out of the vast Australian desert—he wanted to see and smell and taste and hear and touch all of it.”
This Strange Eventful History, itself no less ambitious in sweep and scope, spans seven decades from 1940 to 2010, and chronicles in a stunning, meticulous prose three generations of the Cassar family as they whirl about the globe.
