According to Photios, Diogenes claimed in a preface that The Wonders was actually a copy of a copy of a text discovered centuries before by a soldier in the armies of Alexander the Great. The soldier, Diogenes said, had been exploring the catacombs beneath the city of Tyre when he discovered a small cypress chest. On top of the chest were the words Stranger, whoever you are, open this to find what will amaze you, and when he opened it he found, engraved onto twenty-four cypress-wood tablets, the story of a journey around the world.
Acknowledgments
Profound thanks are due to three extraordinary women: to Binky Urban, whose enthusiasm for early drafts saw me through many months of doubt; to Nan Graham, who edited and improved more versions of this manuscript than I or she could count; and most of all, to Shauna Doerr, who spent much of our pandemic year hunched over pages of this book, who kept me from throwing it away on five separate occasions, and who fills my soul with music and my heart with hope.
Big thanks, too, to our sons Owen and Henry, who helped me dream up the Ilium Corporation and the dropped root beers of Alex Hess, and who make me laugh every day. I love you guys.
Thanks to my brother Mark for his abiding optimism; to my brother Chris who came up with the idea of Konstance using electrolysis to ignite her own hair; to my father, Dick, for cheering me up and on; and to my mother, Marilyn, for growing the libraries and gardens of my youth.
Thanks to Catherine “Perambulator” Knepper, whose encouragement helped me through an arduous series of revisions; to Umair Kazi for believing in Omeir; to the American Academy in Rome—and especially to John Ochsendorf—for once again granting me access to their brilliant community; and to Professor Denis Robichaud for repairing my neophytic Greek.
Thanks to Jacque and Hal Eastman for encouraging, to Jess Walter for understanding, and to Shirley O’Neil and Suzette Lamb for listening. Thanks to every librarian who helped me find a text I needed or didn’t yet know I needed. Thanks to Cort Conley for sending me interesting stuff. Thanks to Betsy Burton for being a champion. Thanks to Katy Sewall for helping me research Seymour’s incarceration.
Thanks to all the wonderful people at Scribner, especially Roz Lippel, Kara Watson, Brianna Yamashita, Brian Belfiglio, Jaya Miceli, Erich Hobbing, Amanda Mulholland, Zoey Cole, Ash Gilliam, and Sabrina Pyun. Thanks to Laura Wise and Stephanie Evans for upgrading my sentences. Thanks to Jon Karp and Chris Lynch for their amazing support.
Thanks to Karen Kenyon, Sam Fox, and Rory Walsh at ICM, and to Karolina Sutton, Charlie Tooke, Daisy Meyrick, and Andrea Joyce at Curtis Brown.
Mega–super thanks to Kate Lloyd, who gets it.
A novel is a human document, made by a single （particularly fallible） human, so despite my efforts and the efforts of the fantastic Meg Storey, I’m sure that errors remain. All inaccuracies, insensitivities, and historical liberties taken-too-far are my fault.
Enduring thanks to Dr. Wendell Mayo, who I like to think would have enjoyed this book, and to Carolyn Reidy, who passed away one day before we were going to send her the manuscript.
To my friends: thank you.
Finally, thanks most of all to you, dear reader. Without you I’d be all alone, adrift atop a dark sea, with no home to return to.