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A review by ergative
Civilisations by Laurent Binet
5.0
Oh, what a perfection of alternate history this book was! Its brilliance comes in its ability to construct a sequence of events that are perfectly internally consistent, exquisitely aligned with the history of Europe, and also utterly topsy-turvy: Although the individual events are recognizable, they are remixed and reimagined into an alternate world that makes our current history seem unimaginable. Because the delight of this book is in the cleverness of its construction and the moments of delight as each event becomes recognizable, rather than the scope of its plot, I'm not going to worry about spoilers, but will simply relate the broad outlines in, I hope, enough detail below to show the brilliance of how some of the main pieces fit together. This same brilliance is repeated at every other level of the plot, down to individual cameo appearances of historical figures.
It's told in four vignettes, the third of which by far the longest, that turns the history of Europe (and the Americas) entirely upside down. In the first vignette, Freydis, daughter of Erik the Red, travels to the Americas with a small group of followers and, among other things, brings with her (1) domesticated horses; (2) the forging of iron; and (3) European diseases. Every time the indigenous people get sick and start dying, they pack up and leave to find a new place to land, in this way seeding the North American continent with all those various pathogens that wrought such havoc in our history with the arrival of Columbus.
This leads to the next vignette, the arrival of Columbus, which goes very badly for Columbus. The indigenous people are more technologically advanced, skilled horsemen, skilled iron-forgers, and immune to European diseases, so Columbus never gets very far and never returns to the New World, instead spending the rest of his life a royal slave in Cuba. Pretty much the only thing he leaves behind is some broken boats and a knowledge of Spanish that Higenamota, the young princess in the household where he is a slave, learns to speak from him.
In the third vignette, Atahualpa, the Incan emperor conquered by Pizarro in our history, has a very different fate. Fleeing from his brother's army during a civil war, he lands on Cuba, where he encounters Higuenamota, now all grown up. Caught up in the spirit of adventure (and still fleeing the pursuing army behind them), Atahualpa, his men, and Higuenamota build boats (using the model of Columbus's wrecks) and sail east, where they encounter the New World (Europe), inhabited by Levantines (Europeans), who worship at the cult of the nailed god (i.e., Jesus). Their adventures in Europe are a superb, brilliant, magnificent remix of all the familiar history: Charles Quint, Henry VIII, Martin Luther, popes, Italian dukes, German peasants--all the familiar figures (and some unfamiliar) feature in this new history that flows from the arrival of the Incas in Europe. All the various events of this sequence have their echoes in our history, but reinterpreted to fit the new political landscape of Europe. Henry VIII still wants to break with the Catholic church, but he does so in a different way. Lorenzino de Medici still does that murder, but he murders someone else. The 95 theses nailed to the church door in Wittenberg have a delightful echo in a second set of 95 theses that get nailed on as the Incan church of the sun starts spreading around Europe.
The last vignette is a sort of epilogue, following the adventures of El Greco, Cervantes, and Michel de Montaigne whose paths cross during this timeline's version of the religious war between the Ottomans and the Holy League that culminated at the Battle of Lepanto. In this world, however, a generation after the arrival of the Incas, the alliances are extremely different. Cervantes and El Greco end up in Cuba, the crossroads of this world, with a description of the land that glows with hope and wonder.
This alternate history is no less bloody and contentious than our own, but in the end this vision seems like the foundation for a present world that feels like it would be a much better world than the one we now have.
It's told in four vignettes, the third of which by far the longest, that turns the history of Europe (and the Americas) entirely upside down. In the first vignette, Freydis, daughter of Erik the Red, travels to the Americas with a small group of followers and, among other things, brings with her (1) domesticated horses; (2) the forging of iron; and (3) European diseases. Every time the indigenous people get sick and start dying, they pack up and leave to find a new place to land, in this way seeding the North American continent with all those various pathogens that wrought such havoc in our history with the arrival of Columbus.
This leads to the next vignette, the arrival of Columbus, which goes very badly for Columbus. The indigenous people are more technologically advanced, skilled horsemen, skilled iron-forgers, and immune to European diseases, so Columbus never gets very far and never returns to the New World, instead spending the rest of his life a royal slave in Cuba. Pretty much the only thing he leaves behind is some broken boats and a knowledge of Spanish that Higenamota, the young princess in the household where he is a slave, learns to speak from him.
In the third vignette, Atahualpa, the Incan emperor conquered by Pizarro in our history, has a very different fate. Fleeing from his brother's army during a civil war, he lands on Cuba, where he encounters Higuenamota, now all grown up. Caught up in the spirit of adventure (and still fleeing the pursuing army behind them), Atahualpa, his men, and Higuenamota build boats (using the model of Columbus's wrecks) and sail east, where they encounter the New World (Europe), inhabited by Levantines (Europeans), who worship at the cult of the nailed god (i.e., Jesus). Their adventures in Europe are a superb, brilliant, magnificent remix of all the familiar history: Charles Quint, Henry VIII, Martin Luther, popes, Italian dukes, German peasants--all the familiar figures (and some unfamiliar) feature in this new history that flows from the arrival of the Incas in Europe. All the various events of this sequence have their echoes in our history, but reinterpreted to fit the new political landscape of Europe. Henry VIII still wants to break with the Catholic church, but he does so in a different way. Lorenzino de Medici still does that murder, but he murders someone else. The 95 theses nailed to the church door in Wittenberg have a delightful echo in a second set of 95 theses that get nailed on as the Incan church of the sun starts spreading around Europe.
The last vignette is a sort of epilogue, following the adventures of El Greco, Cervantes, and Michel de Montaigne whose paths cross during this timeline's version of the religious war between the Ottomans and the Holy League that culminated at the Battle of Lepanto. In this world, however, a generation after the arrival of the Incas, the alliances are extremely different. Cervantes and El Greco end up in Cuba, the crossroads of this world, with a description of the land that glows with hope and wonder.
This alternate history is no less bloody and contentious than our own, but in the end this vision seems like the foundation for a present world that feels like it would be a much better world than the one we now have.