The Invention of the World is informed with the messianic spirit of the Irishman Donal Keneally, whose birth in County Cork around 1860 is predicted by Cathleen ni Houlihan. His mother, though a simple-minded peasant, is perhaps descended from the warrior-king Brian Boru; his father, we are exhorted to believe, is a "bull-god from the sky". With such auspicious parentage, Keneally is of course a boy wonder…. The hand of destiny singles him out as a Moses who must make his mythical journey to the Promised Land, and this turns out to be Vancouver Island where in 1899 with a band of bedraggled Irishmen (and women too needless to say) he founds the Revelations Colony of Truth. At the dedication ceremony, he uses his preternatural gift for mesmeric oratory …, he confirms himself as the colony's Father and Saviour. Yet as the subtitle, "The Eden Swindle", suggests, Keneally's paradisiacal vision is...