Some stories are universal. They play out across human history. And time is the river which will flow through them.

For now this is a family story and this family is is a father, mother and two sons. One with his father's violence in his blood. One who lives his mother's artistry. One leaves. One stays. They will be joined by others whose deeds will change their fate. It is a beginning.

Their stories will intertwine and evolve over the course of two thousand years - they will meet again and again at different times and in different places. From distant Palestine at the dawn of the first millennium to modern day American and beyond. While the world mutates around them, their destinies will remain the same.
And fulfilling a destiny may take lifetimes...

A Traveller at the Gates of Wisdom is the extraordinary new novel from acclaimed writer John Boyne. Ambitious, far-reaching and mythic, it introduces a group of characters whose lives we will come to know and will follow through time and space until they reach their natural conclusion.