Just now, the notion of a long-term project that concludes in 2041 sounds like an optimistic bet on the far future worthy of some 18th-century Enlightenment philosophe – Voltaire’s Dr Pangloss, maybe.

The novel certainly packs a breathless pace as it follows its eponymous hero on an adversity-filled journey around the world that truly tests his mentor Dr. Pangloss’s belief that “[T]his is the best ...