Angol
He made a career out of recreating the past. Then the past began recreating him.
Ren Aoki is a successful historical drama actor who has spent years wearing the faces of men who died long ago. He knows the costumes, the language and the famous events. He knows exactly how the past should look.
Then, without warning, he finds himself inside it.
Thrown backwards through different eras of Japan, Ren must survive worlds that resemble the dramas he has performed, but obey none of their rules. The further he travels, the less useful his knowledge becomes. Names change. Familiar faces appear where they should not. A mysterious elephant follows him through every age, sometimes as an image, sometimes as an object, sometimes as something he cannot explain.
Ren believes there must be a pattern.
But each time he thinks he understands it, the past pulls him deeper.
With no control over where he goes, no certainty that he can return, and no way to know whom he can trust, Ren is forced to confront a question he has avoided for most of his life:
What if the past is not asking to be remembered?
What if it is asking to be recognised?
Naumann's Elephant is a literary time travel novel about memory, identity, history and the lives hidden beneath the stories we tell about ourselves. Moving from modern Japan into increasingly distant worlds, it is a haunting journey towards something older than history, and far more personal.
