New York: Riverhead Books (Penguin Putnam), 2002. dj. Hardcover first edition - Set in Provence, France, this unusual novel tells the stories of three men at three different critical moments of Western civilization: the final days of the Roman Empire, during the Middle Ages when the Black Death ravaged Europe, and in the darkest hours of World War II. These stories are linked by a classical text "The Dream of Scipio". a work of Neoplatonism that poses philosophical questions that are as pertinent today as in the fifth, fourteenth, amd mid-twentieth centuries. Chronology. 398 pp. ISBN: 1-57322-202x.