Civilizations
A Novel
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4.2 • 29 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
An ambitious and highly entertaining novel of revisionist history from the author of the international bestseller HHhH, Laurent Binet's Civilizations is nothing less than a strangely believable counterfactual history of the modern world, fizzing with ideas about colonization, empire-building, and the eternal human quest for domination. It is an electrifying novel by one of Europe's most exciting writers.
Freydis is a woman warrior and leader of a band of Viking explorers setting out to the south. They meet local tribes, exchange skills, are taken prisoner, and get as far as Panama. But nobody ultimately knows what became of them.
Fast forward five hundred years to 1492 and we're reading the journals of Christopher Columbus, mid-Atlantic on his own famous voyage of exploration to the Americas, dreaming of gold and conquest. But he and his men are taken captive by Incas. Even as their suffering increases, his faith in his superiority, and in his mission, is unshaken.
Thirty years later, Atahualpa, the last Inca emperor, arrives in Europe in the ships stolen from Columbus. He finds a continent divided by religious and dynastic quarrels, the Spanish Inquisition, Luther's Reformation, capitalism, the miracle of the printing press, endless warmongering between the ruling monarchies, and constant threat from the Turks. But most of all he finds downtrodden populations ready for revolution. Fortunately, he has a recent bestseller as a guidebook to acquiring power—Machiavelli's The Prince. The stage is set for a Europe ruled by Incas and Aztecs, and for a great war that will change history forever.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Binet (The 7th Function of Language) executes a daring and often delightful counterfactual history of transatlantic conquest. Around the year 1000, Greenlanders and Vikings find their way to the Americas, landing in Cuba and Panama. Here, Binet drily recounts the voyages of Erik the Red, his daughter Freydis, and others who make such observations as, "Day and night were of a more equal length than in Greenland or Iceland." Later, fragments of Christopher Columbus's 1492 diary document his failed voyage, as his men are decimated and his plans to colonize the new world are laid to waste. Instead, Columbus informs the Inca, who have meanwhile been exploring to expand their empire, of another world across the ocean, prompting them to set sail in their own spirit of conquest. In the strongest section, Incan leader Atahualpa and his people conquer and scheme their way across Western Europe. The final section follows the exploits of the young Miguel de Cervantes in 16th-century Mexican-controlled Europe, after that tribe's transAtlantic battles with the Incas. Though some parts are less successful than others, this ingeniously configures a new framework of colonialism, with Mexico dominating the new world. Binet delights with his imaginative powers.
