The first volume, Tales of Jacob, tells of Joseph's father, Jacob, and acts as a sort of prelude. It presents a very strange world -- a world in which people can bury their own son alive as a sacrifice to the gods. And yet, somehow, the characters are not remote: the mythical and the human are held in balance. Joseph himself emerges in the second volume, Young Joseph, and while the first volume provided ample evidence of Mann's mastery of pacing (despite the generally slow pulse), it doesn't perhaps prepare us for what we get in the closing chapters of the second: when Joseph's brothers imprison him in a pit and then sell him into slavery, the narrative acquires a tremendous forward momentum and leaves one breathless with excitement. - Himadri Chatterjee.