EQUILATERAL

From the highly acclaimed National Book Award finalist - published in 13 languages - comes a brilliantly cunning intellectual comedy. Set before the turn of the century in Egypt, Equilateral is a subversively funny story that explores the consequences of blind faith. Kalfus was awarded a Guggenheim based on material from the novel.

British astronomer Sanford Thayer has mounted a gigantic international scientific and engineering effort—employing nine hundred thousand fellahin—to dig out an equilateral triangle, each side 300 miles long, in the desolate Western Desert. His plan is to put nearly 5,000 square miles of pitch into the excavation and to set it afire...at a moment in the summer of 1894 when the desert will be clearly visible to Mars.

The geometric conflagration cannot fail, he believes, to attract the attention of the no-doubt highly evolved inhabitants of the red planet, beings whose phenomenally impressive canal-building Thayer and other stargazers have for years been watching and mapping and/or fooling themselves about.

There is another sort of triangle in play here, a romantic one involving the obsessive Thayer, a man near physical collapse and largely confined to quarters in the makeshift village at remote Point A, and two females: Miss Keaton, Thayer's limitlessly competent and patient helpmeet/assistant, and a young Arab serving girl who speaks no English.

A compelling portrait emerges not only of Thayer and his brand of scientific imperialism, but also of 19th-century positivistic science at its most arrogant. Thayer proceeds with an air of utter certainty. Progress knows only one path, as he sees it, and the Earth is a pliant female creature whose duty it is to yield her secrets to the probing male scientist and his adjunct, the engineer. But there are forces and mysteries at work here that are beyond him. Kalfus maps the boundary between science and mysticism while simultaneously muddying, in a way the 20th century soon would, the previously bright line between scientific certainty and arrogant, self-deluded error.

Equilateral is written with a subtle, sly humor, but it's also a model of reserve and historical accuracy. It's about many things, including Empire, colonization and exploration; it's about "the other" and who that other might be. We would like to talk to the stars, and yet we can barely talk to each other.

Ken Kalfus is the author of two earlier novels and two story collections—all of which won major awards and garnered rave reviews: The Commissariat of Enlightenment, A Disorder Peculiar to the Country, finalist for the National Book Award, and two story collections, Thirst and PU-239 and Other Russian Fantasies. Several of Ken’s stories have been optioned for feature films, and PU-239 was produced by Section 8, with principles George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh. Ken has lived in Paris, Dublin, Belgrade, and Moscow, and has written for Harper's, The New York Review, Bomb, the North American Review, and the Voice Literary Supplement.