In a book that transcends genres and categories, Daniel Mendelsohn explores the mysterious connections between the randomness of the lives we lead and the art of the stories we tell. Combining memoir, biography, and literary criticism, The Three Rings weaves together the tales of three exiled writers who turned to classic works of the past to create their own masterpieces – works that reflect on the very nature of storytelling: Erich Auerbach, the Jewish philologist who escaped from Hitler's Germany and wrote Mimesis, his classic study of Western literature, in Istanbul.

François Fénelon, the 17th-century French archbishop, who co-authored The Adventures of Telemachus – a remarkably clever continuation of the Odyssey and a veiled critique of Louis XIV, which became the biggest bestseller in Europe for a hundred years and resulted in his exile.

And the German novelist W. G. Sebald, self-exiled in England, whose characteristically meandering narratives explore themes common to the Odyssey, such as uprooting, nostalgia, and separation from one’s homeland. Simultaneously, in these stories of exile and artistic crisis, the description of Mendelsohn's own anguish while writing two of his own books – a family saga regarding the Holocaust and a memoir chronicling the study of the Odyssey alongside his elderly father – intertwines; books haunted by stories of anxiety and wandering.

As The Three Rings moves toward its stunning climax, a revelation of how the lives of these three figures were interconnected across geographical borders, languages, and centuries, the reader is compelled to rethink everything about the relationship between narrative and history, art and life.

KIRKUS BEST BOOK 2020 PRIX DU MEILLEUR LIVRE ÉTRANGER 2020, France