A Registry of My Passage upon the Earth

These stories, written over fifteen years, range across centuries and continents. A woman aloft in a balloon finds something that alters her life. A Frenchman tends a lonely railway post in the Amazon, whose only company is the other agents on the telegraph line. A doctor's seizures let a second, possibly better self take over his body. A Bristol dockworker heads toward a famous bare-knuckle bout of 1824, told in seventeen numbered rounds, and a young mother hunts for a miracle that might heal her sick boy. Feverish in the Malay Archipelago, the naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace works out his theory of natural selection. Other stories take place on the Nile, on volcanic islands and in an asylum outside Rio de Janeiro.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Short stories

Genres

Historical (assigned by AI)

First published

2020

Author's age

44 when first published

ISBN

9780316477635 (Little, Brown and Company, United States)

9781529038507 (Picador, United Kingdom)

9780316477628 (Little, Brown Paperbacks, United States)