A new, Vintage Classics red spine edition of A History of the World in 10 Chapters, published to celebrate the enduring impact of writing a career that spans almost half a century

History isn’t what happened. History is just what historians tell us.

From the Titanic to the Amazon, the raft of the Medusa to an ecclesiastical court in medieval France where a bizarre case is about to begin, A History of the World in 10 Chapters presents a surprising, subversive, fictional history of earth told from several kaleidoscopic perspectives. Ambitious yet accessible, witty and playfully serious, this is no ordinary history, but something stranger: a challenge and a delight for the reader’s imagination.

‘Funny, ironic, erudite, surprising, and not afraid to take a dive overboard into the depths of sorrow and loss’ Nadime Gordimer