Billy Griffiths

Yeah, well, so the other fossils in the room, they're joined by, the book, the contract of this book is all that this is a conversation between fossils up for auction.

And so alongside the mammoth and Tyrannosaurus, they're joined by the hand of Queen Hatshepsut, an Egyptian mummy.

who's rather formal and slightly vain.

We're joined also by a very cheeky fossilised penguin, nicknamed Paleo.

And he's cheeky because he was hung up in a bar in Boston for such a long time.

Then later, a truly ancient 150 million-year-old Bavarian pterodactylus.

And this is absurd.

It's crazy.

This should not work, this conversation, and yet it does.

It holds together this absurd premise...

And that, I think, is because of the way in which Flynn has constructed these voices, that to reveal, we inhabit these characters not only through what they say, but also by the ways in which they are saying it, the how they're saying it.

It really is a pleasure to read.

It's a series of ripping yarns in many ways.

But also it is grounded because I find it very moving at different points.

And Mahmud is lost, he's confused, heartbroken in some ways.

He has disdain for hominids, us bipeds, and he shares that disdain, makes it clear.

But he also forms some affection for the hominids who he has known over the 200-odd years since he was dug up.

We...

In this room, in the auction room, we follow his journey.

So he tells the other fossils of his unlikely journey from dying near the end of the last ice age to being exhumed, exhibited, stolen, hidden, smuggled overseas and left in a cave.