Alexandria: A Novel
Description
A visionary and timely novel about a world out of balance by the prizewinning author of The Wake
When Swans return, Alexandria will fall.
One thousand years from now, a small religious community lives in what were once the fens of eastern England. They are perhaps the world’s last human survivors. Now they find themselves stalked by a force that draws ever closer, and that seems to have brought them to the brink of extinction. A force that offers them a promise and a threat: a place called Alexandria.
Set in a time on the far side of an apocalypse, and perhaps on the verge of another, Paul Kingsnorth’s radical new novel is a work of matchless, mythic imagination. It is driven by elemental themes: community versus the self, the mind versus the body, machine over man—and the tension between an unstable present and an unknown, unknowable future.
Alexandria is the rousing conclusion to an extraordinary fiction project that began with Kingsnorth’s prizewinning novel The Wake, one that maps two thousand years of troubled human history.
Praise for Alexandria: A Novel
“Unconventional orthography . . . and mythical style add texture to a story that examines whether the body is essential or merely the mind’s cage and whether humans are inherently destructive. When one stalker has doubts about his mission, his crisis of belief drives the book into unexpected territory.”—The New Yorker, Briefly Noted
“Imaginative, moody, brilliantly written—vintage Kingsnorth, that is, and a boon for readers of speculative fiction.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
