Laurent Binet: Civilisations

     Here is a fascinating alternative history: in nutshell, the Viking settlement in Greenland does not die out; instead, contact is made with pre-Incan civilisation in the Americas; Columbus fails to discover the Americas; the Incas and later the Aztecs discover and conquer and partition Europe between them; Cervantes and a fellow artist (the Greek, so El Greco?) find themselves exiled to the Americas…

It’s a four-part story, carefully structured to add credibility to the vision. So the first section is vaguely styled like a Viking saga, chaotic, murderous and linking into many of the stereotypes we hold of the Vikings. Cohabitation and then alliance between them and the early North American civilisations is forged through the efforts of a powerful Viking queen whose intentions are peaceful rather than warrior-like, and who is disturbed at the realisation that her people have brought with them illnesses that decimate the local inhabitants.

Columbus’ tale is marked by his cupidity, stupidity and obsession with imposing the Catholic faith on everyone he encounters. He is unsuccessful in skirmishes with the inhabitants of the Americas who have metal-working skills acquired from their encounters with the Vikings several centuries earlier, and so better weaponry; they also have horses, acquired the same way. The Europeans are outwitted by the Incas or the Aztecs – we don’t know, partly because Columbus isn’t interested enough to find out. He dies alone, last of the Europeans in America.

When we meet the Incas, they are beset by internecine feuds and capable of random acts of bloodthirsty cruelty. A small army of renegade Incas do a ‘reverse Columbus’, and sail East, helped by those descended from the Vikings and who defeated Columbus and his men a few decades previously. They land and establish themselves in the ruins of a Lisbon which has been flattened by an earthquake and tsunami, and take things from there. I did find myself wondering how, suddenly, and with no apparent prior experience, the Incas had become quite skilful navigators and pilots…

Columbus’ adventures meant that Atahualpa’s princess understands Spanish, and can converse with the Queen of Portugal: communication is established. The Incas enjoy as much luck in their conquest of Europe as Pizarro and Cortes and their men did in reality, in their conquest of the Americas. This is the central and most interesting section of the novel, and the way that Binet weaves in various characters from history is skilful and enlightening: there’s a fascinating, imagined exchange of letters between Thomas More and Erasmus on the subject of Inca sun-worship…

The final section is the adventures of the Spaniard Cervantes, which includes a lengthy stay with Montaigne in Bordeaux before he ends up being sent across the ocean to work in the Americas, for the Incas and Aztecs have need of artists and writers, areas in which they have limited experience.

It’s an alternative history, a piece of total fantasy, as are all novels of this kind; it’s a ‘what if?’ which reminds us of the chance nature of a good many developments in our world. It entertains, as well as makes the reader think, and it showcases an excellent imagination. Binet has conceived the work well, and for me the open, incomplete nature of the four-part structure, and the use of associated styles and mannerisms, added a vitality and a sense of conviction (if that makes sense!) to the novel for me. Thoroughly entertaining and thought-provoking, and I’m really pleased to see it has been translated into English now…

These I have (also) loved…

(continuing the theme of literatures from other lands)

 It does seem a little unfair to put so many writers and nations together under ‘other’ but you will understand what I mean when I say that there is not enough time to read everything I would like to, and that some countries and authors will just have to wait for my next existence…

I’m glad I read Don Quixote once. I’m not sure I’ll have time to come back to him, but I did understand why the Spanish love him, and I learned quite a lot about the development of the novel in its early days.

The Portuguese writer Jose Saramago has intrigued me and I’ve read several of his novels; Blindness, which I believe had been made into a film and which I’m definitely NOT planning to watch, is one of the scariest and most horrifying novels I’ve read. Almost everyone is struck blind over the course of a few days, and the anarchy and human vileness which is released makes the world of Lord of the Flies seem like the Teddy Bears’ Picnic. It’s stunning, and fearsomely convincing. However, it’s Antonio Tabucci‘s Pereira Maintains that I have liked best from that country’s literature. He conveys the spookiness of the long Salazar dicatatorship very effectively indeed.

I’ve read several Italian novelists. Umberto Eco I’ve written at great length about elsewhere in this blog if you care to look, so no more about him. Primo Levi I have found very moving. He was an Auschwitz survivor who eventually committed suicide, but not before writing a powerful memoir, If This is a Man, and an intriguing, semi-autobiographical novel inspired by his life (he was a research chemist) called The Periodic Table, which I think is a masterpiece, especially the final chapter. And I love the lighthearted feel of The Garden of the Finzi Continis, by Gregorio Bassani, with the hidden undertones of menace in the background… but if I had to pick the very best, then I’d undoubtedly go for Giovanni di Lampedusa‘s The Leopard, a stunningly beautiful and lyrical tale of the emergence of modern Italy and the disappearance of an era seen through the eyes of a man who knows it must happen, wants it to happen and knows it makes him redundant, inescapably part of a past that has gone forever.

I also have to mention the Albanian Ismail Kadare. Older friends of mine will be acquainted with my fascination with the country, largely due to listening to propaganda broadcasts from Radio Tirana in the evenings. So when I came across translations – mainly into French, but some into English, of this astonishing writer, I was hooked. Broken April is set in the tradition of the kanun, or blood-feud, a historically Albanian thing, with all sorts of rules about who you can and can’t kill, and when. The Pyramid is an allegory of sorts about his own country under the dictatorship of Enver Hoxha, while telling the story of the building of the pyramids in ancient Egypt, and The Palace of Dreams creates a bureaucracy to rival Kafka‘s. And then there are realistic novels set in the Albania of the fifties and sixties as she fell out with the Soviet Union (‘social imperialists’)and came to ally herself with the Chinese, The Concert, and The Great Winter. He is a masterly chronicler of his times and his country, and an entertaining novelist.

I’m glad to have been able to get to know (I’m sure merely skimming the surface) the literature of so many other lands; I do think it’s sad how many people I meet who, though they may venture far from our shores on holiday, never do so in the realms of reading. What they have missed…