Dimensions
153 x 233 x 27mm
It is 1758 and Matthieu Zela is fleeing Paris for Dover, having witnessed the murder of his mother by his stepfather and his subsequent execution for that crime. Beginning in murder and ending in redemption, Matthieu's life is characterised by one extraordinary fact: before the eighteenth century ends he discovers that his body has stopped ageing. At the end of the twentieth century he is able to look back on a life lived to the full. He has been an engineer, a rogue, a movie mogul, a soldier, a financier, a cable TV executive and a lover to many, living through murder, treachery, despair, passion, glamour and, ultimately hope.
Spanning two-and-a-half centuries, The 'Thief of Time' weaves Hollywood in the 1920s, the Great Exhibition of 1851, the French Revolution, the Wall Street Crash, the formation of the modern Olympic Games in Athens in 1896 and much more into a dazzling narrative. By ingeniously juxtaposing history and personal experience, it presents us with a stunning portrait of a life lived selflessly.