The latest addition to my website is Josef Škvorecký‘s Nevysvetlitelný príbeh aneb Vyprávení Questa Firma Sicula (An Inexplicable Story or the Narrative of Questus Firmus Siculus). This is a tongue-in-cheek Ovid novel, purporting to be a 1st century Roman manuscript, written by a man whose mother may have been Ovid’s lover. The manuscript is inexplicably found in a royal palace in Copán in what is now Honduras. How it got there is a mystery but the manuscript seems to be genuine. We follow the life of Questus Firmus Siculus, both the Ovid story as well as how he got to South/Central America, as well as various explanations by experts and coincidences between the various tales and more modern tales. It is great fun and Škvorecký tells us how he thought it all up but it is not his greatest work.