TRAVELS WITH HERODOTUS by Ryszard Kapuscinski Allen Lane £20, 288 pages FT bookshop price: £16

In Michael Ondaatje's 1992 novel The English Patient little is known about the dying pilot lying in a Tuscan ruin. The only certainty is that he carries The Histories by Herodotus, a 5th- century BC Greek writer, which he has used as a commonplace book. With Herodotus he has navigated his way through the air and the desert, as well as through a life now drawing to its end. In the gradual revelations of his true identity, a reader might recall that Herodotus, sometimes called the "father of history", was also known as the "father of lies".