Civilization in twilight

Iain Pears is everybody's fantasy of the ultimate history teacher. (At least for people whose fantasies extend to history teachers.) His popular mysteries, so intricately woven from the threads of the past, have given the genre more class and intellectual depth than it's ever had. His latest novel, "The Dream of Scipio," is another category-buster, a work of such philosophical and cultural complexity that its greatest mystery is "How can Pears know so much?"

Pears's canvas has never been larger (Western culture), or his concerns more profound (What is civilization?). Summarizing this complicated story risks intimidating readers away, but – while it's good to be prepared for some work – this is another wildly entertaining novel.

He follows three historians in Provence at three moments when Western civilization seemed ready to shatter:

• Manlius Hippomanes, the Bishop of Vaison, who struggles to slow the fall of Rome in the 5th century.

• Olivier de Noyen, a poet and collector of manuscripts, who serves Cardinal Ceccani during the Black Death of the 14th century.

• Julien Barneuve, a classical historian, who reluctantly works for the French government after the Nazi occupation in the 20th century.

Pears has constructed a kind of literary Rubik's Cube, spinning these stories through each other in short chapters that produce fascinating patterns and parallels. All three men are captivated by the Neoplatonic philosophy of Sophia, a stoic Greek woman whose father was literally killed by the fall of Rome, when the ceiling of his classroom collapsed.

At a time when classical philosophy is fighting weakly against the onslaught of Christian dogma, Sophia serves as Manlius's mentor. Even after his conversion, a merely political declaration, Sophia struggles to instill the logic of her ancient virtue. As a show of reverence, Manlius composes a dialogue called "The Dream of Scipio." He hopes to demonstrate to his teacher how well he understands her radical notion that the soul is a reflection of the divine, trapped in a material body, eager to reunite after a journey of understanding.

One of the dazzling pleasures of this novel is Pears's ability to follow the bumblebee flight of an idea through the ravages of time. At his death, Bishop Manlius's scandalous library is burned to protect his reputation, but "The Dream of Scipio" survives, mistaken for a Christian text. It's transferred to a church archive, where it sits for 300 years until that library, too, burns. But before that disaster, "The Dream" is transcribed, badly, so that Olivier de Noyen, a clerical courtier in the 14th century, can make a copy of it that ends up in the Vatican library, where Julien Barneuve translates it again as the Nazis destroy Europe.

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