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SEPTIMANIA

Jonathan Levi

Jonathan Levi is back with his first novel in 24 years since the critically acclaimed A Guide for the Perplexed. SEPTIMANIA is a strange and magical romance, ambitious in scope, traveling through time and geography, from the 8th century to to the present day, and countries both current and historic, including England, France, Italy, Babylon, and the United States.
On an idyllic 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 8th-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 terrorists, 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. But most of all, SEPTIMANIA is the quest of a Candide for for love and knowledge, and, perhaps, the ultimate discovery that they may be unified after all.

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, Condé Nast Traveler, GQ, Terra Nova, The Nation and The New York Times. Born in New York, he currently lives in Rome, Italy.
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Published 2016-04-01 by Overlook

Comments

Maya Kitap

“Septimania” has the format of a novel, but it has roots in the folk-tales of “The Arabian Nights.” It reaches out to epic, in the form of Dante's “Divine Comedy,” and to Wordsworth's Newton, “voyaging through strange seas of thought, alone.” It takes in the sad modern world of refugees and terrorism, plots and code-breakers. And it's a love story, too. More than one reading will be needed to digest Mr. Levi's comprehensive, many-branching vision. It adds new dimensions to the idea of the novel." Read more...

"Septimania is a love story, a country, 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

Nieuw Amsterdam

Levi creates an energetically brilliant, genre-defying masterpiece filled with lavish descriptions, mysteries intertwined with history and legend, and a large cast of memorable, offbeat characters.” —Booklist, starred review

"[...] nature of numerology, and Schroedinger's cat, all laced with philosophy and wit - 'The digital alarm blinked out the minutes of the early hours with a spastic colon.' A thoroughly intellectual postmodern fable, wise yet melancholy, meant to be read slowly and savored." Read more...

Rey + Naranjo

Reading Jonathan Levi's new novel “Septimania” is like dancing on a moving stage; it's exhilarating, even as you worry that your feet might fly out from under you.

Nieuw Amsterdam