In this energetic, adventurous book, Nì Mheallaigh explores how ‘the experience of fiction’ is articulated and allegorized in a series of Imperial fictional texts, ranging from the familiar (Lucian’s True Stories, the canonical novels) to the lesser known (Antonius Diogenes’ Wonders Beyond Thule, Lucian’s Toxaris and Philopseudes) and the downright obscure (Ptolemy Chennus’ New History). Lucian, however, is the book’s true beating heart – an ‘iconic’, ‘game-changing’ theorist and creator of fiction in the mold of Umberto Eco (35–36).