In a world obsessively focused on building a better future for humanity, the past may sometimes appear as an irrelevance, even as a burden that needs to be cast off if mankind has to forge ahead. A preoccupation with what happened long ago may be seen as a futile exercise in nostalgia by those who immerse themselves in the present. And, yet, as William Faulkner memorably puts it, the past is not dead; it is not even past. In mysterious and powerful ways it keeps erupting into the present and shapes the future. The way we understand, interpret and narrativise it is sometimes a matter of life and death. No wonder, as the Russian proverb playfully warns us, ‘The past is unpredictable’.