Septimania

About the Book

On an spring afternoon in 1978 in the loft of a church outside Cambridge, England, an organ tuner named Malory loses his virginity to a dyslexic math genius named Louiza. When Louiza disappears, Malory follows her trail to Rome. There, the quest to find his love gets sidetracked when he discovers he is the heir to the Kingdom of Septimania, given by Charlemagne to the Jews of eighth-century France. In the midst of a Rome reeling from the kidnappings and bombs of the Red Brigades, Malory is crowned King of the Jews, Holy Roman Emperor and possibly Caliph of All Islam.

Over the next fifty years, Malory s search for Louiza leads to encounters with Pope John Paul II, a band of lost Romanians, a magical Bernini statue, Haroun al Rashid of Arabian Nights fame, an elephant that changes color, a shadowy U.S. spy agency and one of the 9/11 bombers, an appleseed from the original Tree of Knowledge, and the secret history of Isaac Newton and his discovery of a Grand Unified Theory that explains everything. It is the quest of a Candide for love and knowledge, and the ultimate discovery that they may be unified after all."

About the Author :
Jonathan Levi is an American writer and producer, and author of A Guide for the Perplexed. His short stories and articles have also appeared in many magazines including Granta, Conde Nast Traveler, GQ, Terra Nova, The NationandThe New York Times. Born in New York, he currently lives in Rome, Italy."

Review :
For people who love to dream. Stupendous.--Alvaro Enrigue, The New York Times Book Review, By the Book " Highly intelligent, insanely ambitious, and restlessly imaginative, Levi s novel is also so recondite that any attempt to accurately describe its plot risks sounding like madness...Levi s vast creation pays off once you give in to its unique fusion of history, music, and the origin of belief in invisible things." [L]aced with philosophy and wit. A thoroughly intellectual postmodern fable, wise yet melancholy, meant to be read slowly and savored." Levi's fable of love, religion and physics dances with a spirited and lambent invention, rendered in precise and often lyrically beautiful prose.--Owen Sheers, author of I Saw a Man and Resistance Septimania is a voracious novel, boundless in its curiosity and fearless in its execution. It is a storytelling feat. --Juan Gabriel Vasquez, author of The Sound of Things Falling" A richly imagined, complex tapestry of gleaming threads woven through the centuries to converge in a glorious epiphany. This is realism as magical as the best of Garcia Marquez.--Homerjo Aridjis, author of 1492: The Life and Times of Juan Cabezon of Castile" Septimania is a love story, a kingdom, a novel of wild and rich imagination. For Levi, for his Jews, his Catholics, his Arabs, and even the Scientists of his creative universe, all roads lead to Rome. There is a lyricism to Levi s writing that is sometimes religious, sometimes profane, but always musical. --A.B. Yehoshua, author of Los Angeles Times Book Prize-winning novel, A Woman in Jerusalem" Septimania is a masterpiece: a rule-bending, category-smashing, delightful work of brilliance that combines history and longing and religion and timelessness with good old-fashioned story-telling. --Bill Buford, author of Heat and Among the Thugs