"Two tales, parallel and yet individual." This is Thomas Keneally's description of this, his latest work. Best known for Schindler's List, Mr. Keneally is a literary force, intensely curious and loving toward the entire world, its histories and inhabitants. Here we have "a story by one old man about the deaths of two other old men," one contemporary, the other, some 42,000 years ago, united by forces of what it means to be human, what is called "flashes of DNA" by one character. Shelby Apple is a documentary filmmaker whose work has taken him from the desert warfare of Eritrea to the bottom of the ocean in a submersible, and even to the outermost reaches of the arctic. Each memory of such travel is presented in counterpoint to his aboriginal counterpart, while each man is coming to grips with the fact of his own mortality. To read Thomas Keneally is a privilege.

The "voice" of Learned Man made no sense to me--he seems to alternate between what we think an ancient person might have sounded like and . . . modern slang. I just couldn't get into it, and I didn't finish this book.