This inventive improvisation on the myth of Atlas, who was condemned to hold up the world for his part in the gods' rebellion against Zeus, turns on the phrase, I want to tell the story again. And so the British writer, whose first novel won the Whitbread Prize, tells and retells a story familiar to anyone laboring under the weight of destiny. The story may start in primordial chaos then wander through the Garden of the Hesperides in search of Hera's golden apples of life, but by the end—by now, that is—it is our story: “If only I understood that the globe itself, complete, perfect, unique, is a story. History is a story. These are the stories we tell ourselves to make ourselves come true.”