Présentation de l'éditeur
On ritual occasions, Plato, the orator, summons the citizens of London to impart the ancient history of their city, dwelling particularly on the unhappy era of Mouldwarp (AD 1500-2300). He lectures upon
The Origin of Species by the nineteenth-century novelist Charles Dickens and on Sigmund Freud while providing a glossary of twentieth-century terms, and explaining such early myths of creation as "super-string theory'"and "relativity." But then he has a dream, or vision, or he goes on a real journey - opinions are divided - and enters a vast underground cavern, where citizens of Mouldwarp London still live. On his return, Plato shares his stories of this lost world, but his words spread consternation among his fellow citizens and they quickly put him on trial for corrupting the youth with his lies and fables.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
Extrait
The Lectures and Remarks of Plato on the Condition of Past Ages
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Sparkler: Wait, Sidonia, wait!
Sidonia: Gladly.
Sparkler: I just saw you in the market. You were standing beneath the city wall, and so I assumed that you were listening to Plato's oration.
Sidonia: Correct in every respect, Sparkler. But I expected to see you there, since you always celebrate the feast of Gog.
Sparkler: I was about to cross the Fleet, and join you, when Madrigal stopped me.
Sidonia: What did he want?
Sparkler: Only something about a parish meeting. But, as a result, I missed Plato's opening remarks. I heard only his ending, when he spoke of his sorrow at the darkness of past ages.
Sidonia: It was all very interesting. There was a period when our ancestors believed that they inhabited a world which revolved around a sun.
Sparkler: Can it be true?
Sidonia: Oh yes. They had been told that they lived upon a spherical planet, moving through some kind of infinite space.
Sparkler: No!
Sidonia: That was their delusion. But it was the Age of Mouldwarp. According to Plato, the whole earth seemed to have been reduced and rolled into a ball until it was small enough to fit their theories.
Sparkler: But surely they must have known--or felt?
Sidonia: They could not have known. For them the sun was a very powerful god. Of course we were all silent for a moment, after Plato had told us this, and then he laughed.
Sparkler: He laughed?
Sidonia: Even when he had taken off the orator's mask, he was still smiling. Then he began to question us. 'Do you consider me to be small? I know that you do. Could you imagine the people of Mouldwarp to be much, much smaller? Their heads were tiny, and their eyes like pinpoints. Do you know,' he said, 'that in the end they believed themselves to be covered by a great net or web?'
Sparkler: Impossible. I never know when Plato is telling the truth.
Sidonia: That is what he enjoys. The game. That is why he is an orator.
Sparkler: We who have known him since childhood--
Sidonia: --never cease to wonder.
Sparkler: But who could be convinced by such wild speculations?
Sidonia: Come and decide for yourself. Walk with me to the white chapel, where he is about to begin his second oration.
Revue de presse
"Richly revealing. . . . Unlike anything else Peter Ackroyd has written. . . . A jeu d'esprit."
--The New York Times Book Review
"A lively tale and an invigorating meditation on the changelessness, after no matter how many eons, of human nature."
--Time
"A serious divertissement, a brilliant fabulation that is the product of a playful, engaged, and well-stocked mind."
--The Boston Globe
"A little book that raises some big questions. . . . You can finish it in a couple of hours. But if you read it carefully, you'll be thinking about it for days."
--Philadelphia Inquirer
"Peter Ackroyd is a visionary, as
The Plato Papers makes clear. This is one of the oddest but most important and original novels to appear in many years. This masterpiece of contemporary writing will thrill and entertain readers for years to come, but it wil
