Library

My name is Joseph Bernstein, I am almost eight years old, and my parents have gone somewhere. But Miss Marcel said that my name must be Joseph Bertin, I am six years old, my parents died of influenza; because I am a Jew, I have to hide in the yellow villa of Father Pence. But what does it mean to be Jewish? Why can't I be like others? In Father Pence's secret base, I finally found the answer to this question, and I understood that no matter what kind of people they are, they have the right to survive, and our lives are not only meaningful to ourselves... "Do you know who was the first collector in human history? It was Noah. He saved all the creatures created by God."

This book is the first part of the long series "Time Travelers" by French writer Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt. This masterpiece, which the writer spent thirty years gestating, tells the history of mankind in the form of a novel: the protagonist goes through evolution and revolution from prehistory to the present, and the past illuminates the present. The protagonist Norm was born in a lakeside village in the Neolithic Age and grew up surrounded by nature. He encountered the tragedy of the tribe, met the charming woman Nora, and was changed by a famous disaster-the great flood: he gained the ability to live forever. It's a gift and a curse. He is free from human fears: disease, aging, and death; but he is also unable to establish ordinary relationships with people. In order not to be discovered, he has to escape every once in a while. He was forced to become an eternal wanderer, constantly traveling through new places, new languages, and new societies to explore what happened to himself and try to grasp the essence and meaning of life. To tell Nome's adventures is to tell the history of mankind. From the time of the Flood to today, Nome has witnessed and even participated in all the transformations that make us who we are: from hunter-gathering to settlement, from villages to cities, the creation of writing, the birth of class, the beginning of the economy, the construction of religion, the survival of political institutions, technological and scientific inventions, the birth and decadence of art and civilization... And the irreversible damage to the environment caused by human existence.