Laurent Binet

Civilisations

c.1000AD: Erik the Red's daughter heads south from Greenland 1492: Columbus does not discover America 1531: the Incas invade Europe Freydis is the leader of a band of Viking warriors who get as far as Panama. Nobody knows what became of them... Five hundred years later, Christopher Columbus is sailing for the Americas, dreaming of gold and conquest. Even when captured by Incas, his faith in his superiority and his mission is unshaken. Thirty years after that, Atahualpa, the last Inca emperor, arrives in Europe. What does he find? The Spanish Inquisition, the Reformation, capitalism, the miracle of the printing press, endless warmongering between the ruling monarchies, and constant threat from the Turks. But most of all, downtrodden populations ready for revolution. Fortunately, he has a recent guidebook to acquiring power - Machiavelli's The Prince. It turns out he is very good at it. So, the stage is set for a Europe ruled by Incas and, when the Aztecs arrive on the scene, for a great war that will change history forever. Civilisations is a wildly entertaining counterfactual story about the modern world, colonisation, empire-building and the eternal human quest for domination. It is an electrifying novel by one of Europe's most exciting writers.

Peter Schoppert

Looks like it would be good to read alongside #TheDawnofEverything… because it is a sort of fictionalised version of what Graeber and Wengrow call “the indigenous critique”. What an Incan prince might make of 17th century Europe. 

Binet puts into the Inca’s mind Montaigne’s story of the Tupinambas, as recounted by Appiah in his #NYRB Review of The Dawn.  ‘They further marveled, Montaigne writes, that “there were amongst us men full and crammed with all manner of commodities” while others “were begging at their doors, lean and half-starved with hunger and poverty.” The Tupinambas wondered that these unfortunates “were to suffer so great an inequality and injustice, and that they did not take the others by the throats, or set fire to their houses.”’ 

Civilisations

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