Here is the long and storied background to how this brick of a book has been in my possession, unread, for 20 years: I picked up The Histories from the sale rack at A&B sound when I was a romantic undergrad student, smitten by Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient, in which The Histories plays a supporting role (it is the book that Ralph Fiennes’ character carries with him everywhere and turns into a journal, pasting in paintings that Kirstin Scott Thompson’s character made of the […]