Canongate £12 pp274

FALLEN
by David Maine

Canongate £10.99 pp244

Publishers and agents receive novels retelling ancient myths by almost every post. As a rule, the manuscripts go straight on to the reject pile. But Canongate has actually put together a series of the things by big-name or up-and- coming international talent. At least now they have the perfect response for all the no-hopers: “Sorry, we’ve only just done that one.”

Victor Pelevin, a Russian with an emergent reputation in Britain and America, has turned in an internet version of the Minotaur legend. David Maine, an American living in Pakistan, tells the story of Cain and Abel. His book is not technically part of the series, perhaps because it does not adopt a modern setting.

Pelevin’s eight characters are stuck in a chatroom. They don’t know how they got there. (The phrase “Be seeing you” occurs, invoking Patrick McGoohan as The Prisoner.) They are all sitting, they say, in similar Greek-style cells, wearing chitons and tapping away on computers that give access only to this one site. They can leave their cells, but they each find a labyrinth outside, where the Minotaur prowls. He is a sort of god whose horned bronze helmet gives him troubling visions, and the characters work out that they — we — are in his fantasy. We are all wearing his “helmet of horror”, but only because we think we are. The cynical character Nutscracker (“Life’s like falling off a roof . . . All free will means is you can choose whether to fart in mid-flight or wait till you hit the ground”) says that lived experience is just “a drawing on the wall, a few flickers in the eyepieces of the helmet”. Well, if it isn’t Plato’s Cave.

Russians are more prone to Platonism than empirically minded Britons, partly because a certain Platonic denial of reality has long been the only way they can get through the day. The wise drunk Sartrik suggests that “all those English astrophysicists . . . should be thrown in the slammer” for pretending that the universe actually exists. The novel may seem airy-fairy, and Dr Johnson would give it a good kick, but it presents ideas that the wider European mind finds useful, and it is sharp, funny and, what’s the word, numinous.

Adam, in Maine’s story, tells his son Cain, “God’s will is done, always. Accept it and be free, or fight it and be a prisoner of your own limited understanding all your life.” Maine remarks, “Sometimes he has a way with words.”

We already know about Cain and Abel, of course, but Maine tells the story backwards, from Cain’s old age all the way to Eden and the Fall, with the chapters numbered in reverse. As a former mental-health worker, Maine does some psychologising on the First Family to explain what made Cain such a truculent beggar. This can feel clunky, but it only affects certain scenes.

Mostly, the portrayal of Adam, Eve and their children is astonishing. They retain their mythical, archetypal quality, yet are utterly, quirkily credible. The reader may find it impossible to see Genesis any other way afterwards. The staid, mild Adam hates to hunt, for instance, makes excuses to avoid it, and Eve has to bully him into it or they’ll starve: a thoughtful take on the way the sexes play off each other. The reject pile is usually stiff with angry feminist rewrites of Genesis claiming all men are psychopaths, but Maine takes the palm, and his crisp, beautiful prose is near flawless.

Available at Sunday Times Books First prices of £10.80 (The Helmet of Horror) and £9.89 (inc p&p) on 0870 165 8585 and www.timesonline.co.uk/booksfirst

Times Recommends

• Simon Kernick's Harrogate festival diary
• The 10 greatest sci-fi films never made
• Europe Between the Oceans by Barry Cunliffe