Review Summaries

• The bold counterfactual setup and the placement of historical figures stand out, creating a strong sense of enjoyment in watching the world rearrange itself.

Reviews

• Wickedly funny

  A wonderful, funny read, retelling“a what if” the Incas had actually invaded and colonised Europe instead of the European conquest of the New World. And what a much nicer Europe it would have been! It is hard to believe the whole thing is fiction, as it reads ( an easy read where you chuckle a lot) as a proper history book, complete with primary sources, ie letters from Christopher Columbus, correspondence between Erasmus and Cardinal Worley and other famous characters from European history. Highly recommended to history buffs( remember, it is fiction,) and to those who like a satirical look at our modern society as well. Haven’t enjoyed and laughed so much in a long time.

• What if?

  What if history had been different. If the defeated had won, if a single change led to a cumulative disturbance in history. Again and again, this book explores what might have been. What if the vikings had explored more of the Americas and encountered the Incas. What if Columbus had failed, in part as a consequence of the Vikings interactions with the peoples of South America many years before. And what if the Incas had invaded Europe, and prevailed, partly as a consequence of those events. I love the better world painted by Laurent Binet that his soaring imagination has created in these pages. I enjoyed the little jokes - a brick pyramid outside the Louvre, for example. I enjoyed meeting Pizarro. Montaigne, Cervantes and El Greco in somewhat different circumstances.. The book has a slightly satirical quality, a playfulness, as well as some more serious questions about tolerance and the role of government. I enjoyed it a great deal and will now go on to read some more of Laurent Binet's work

• Entertaining, Clever and Subtle

  [Attempting to avoid spoilers] Counterfactual history usually goes like this...What if the Nazis had won World War II? What if the South had won the US Civil War? Etc. In other words, what if one big event had been different? And what would the world look like. A lot of these sorts of counterfactuals are well done, especially Philip K Dick's Man in the High Castle. However, they tend to keep a tight focus around the implications of the one major difference. Binet not so much. Inspired by the Butterfly Effect and an appreciation for Jared Diamond, he takes a different approach. The initial changes to history are small and relatively subtle...some readers might not even notice a few of them. By the time the small changes accumulate to result in a "major" shift, almost a 1,000 years have gone by. And from that point, everything is different, but also similar, e.g. [spoiler] a pyramid ends up in the courtyard of the Louvre in both realities. A lot of other events in this new reality echo events in our own and twist them slightly, usually in a way that is thought provoking and satirical, sometimes even laugh out loud funny. By the time it ends, Binet has built a rich history of a new place, a place that I was excited to visit, disappointed to have to leave, and desirous for more of. A sequel is probably unlikely and unnecessary, but I would read it immediately just the same.

• What if … ? History turned on its head!

  Laurent Binet’s ”Civilisations“ belongs to that kind of inspiring (also, unfortunately, often ridiculed) books that deal with the question of what might have been the consequences if historic events had happened differently. Of course, one might ask: why bother since the historic events dealt with cannot be changed anymore. But then, again, the what if-questions get their particular importance from the fact that they underline the implications of the decisions actually taken and the events that they led to. Binot succeeds brilliantly with his attempt when he has Columbus sail to and discover America, only to die there. Following the unhappy trail of Columbus’s adventures in the new world, the author then has the indigenous population (under the leadership of the Inca Athahualpa) embark on a tour of discovery and eventually conquest of Europe – using as their point of departure the city of Lisbon in Portugal. The events lead us through the following decades of 16th-century European history, addressing all the important political and religious conflicts that characterized that century. Even considering the occasional inconsistencies that a counterfactual history of Europa must almost of necessity contain, Laurent Binet shows us convincingly that things might have happened differently if certain decisions had not been taken. A caveat: Reading the book is a tour de force covering the events of the Europe of that tumultuous century. The reader should be familiar with all major (and a lot of minor) characters and events to fully appreciate the book. Just two examples of what the reader has to deal with: Athahualpa: ”The Empire is worth a Mass.” (ch. 57) – a reference to the Henry IV’s alleged statement “Paris is well worth a mass.”; or the legal principle “cuius regio, eius religio” indirectly referred to in ch. 60 “…to each region, its religion.”. Still, a good read.

• bom trabalho

  Entregue em boa forma no tempo. Obrigado

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