Review

With A Traveller at the Gates of Wisdom, John Boyne has taken the novel to a higher plane

By Frank O'Shea
September 12 2020 - 12:00am
  • A Traveller at the Gates of Wisdom, by John Boyne. Doubleday. $32.99.

"On the night that I was born, my father slaughtered a dozen infant boys, sons of our neighbours and friends." The speaker is the narrator throughout the two millennia covered in this story; his father is a Roman centurion named Marinus, carrying out an order from King Herod in the year 1 AD in Palestine. We never learn his name, but his first person narrative continues through more than 2000 years in places as diverse as Eritrea, Mexico, New Zealand and Norway.