A Bavoho grandfather tells legends to children (Image: Leonard McCombe / Time & Life Pictures / Getty Images) You can’t understand literature without understanding the minds that read it, and vice versa (Image: Belknap Press)

LIKE all the best stories, this one has a pleasing symmetry. It is a book in two parts, each illuminating the other. On one side stands evolutionary theory and its attempts to explain human nature. On the other is story itself, represented by two great works of fiction: Homer’s Odyssey and Dr Seuss’s Horton Hears a Who!

Brian Boyd’s thesis is that current literary criticism …