The twelve casual and surprising verses in St Matthew's Gospel which tell the story of the Magi have grown into nearly three hundred pages in Michel Tournier's spectacularly free retelling of it [Gaspard, Melchior & Balthazar]. In the biblical version, and in the vast iconography that is descended from it, the Three Wise Men travel as one, inseparably bound on a common mission. In Tournier's version they become enduringly distinct from one another, assorted victims of fate with very different hopes of what may happen to them in Bethlehem. Each king is a real or metaphorical exile from his country and has his mind fixed more on the distressing past than on the open future. Each in his way finds an answer to his deepest needs in the Christian promise of the Nativity.

As a novelist Tournier's forte has been just such retellings of old legends asking for renewal...