On the Isle of Antioch

November 1, 2023

Just as Alec Zander finishes his last drawing for the day, the electricity goes out and the radio emits a low, persistent whistle. He fears the worst--nuclear war. Alec, a former lawyer and now a syndicated cartoonist, is one of two inhabitants on the small island of Antioch. The other resident, �ve, is a reclusive writer whose first book was hailed as a prophetic masterpiece. From Alec's diary entries spanning a month, readers learn that the world has been taken over by a mysterious group known as "the friends of Empedocles" who are intent on disarming nuclear weapons and curing the sick. Even in his isolation Alec makes contact with members of the "friends," the townsfolk on the mainland, and �ve, with whom he falls in love. In this dystopian novel, Prix Goncourt-winning Lebanese French author Maalouf (The Disoriented) interweaves Greek philosophy with lengthy discussions on war, politics, the United States, medicine, and the unruly nature of humanity. Although some of the discourse appears random and despairing, Maalouf tries to remain positive about the future. VERDICT A timely novel that captures the concerns of today and is an excellent addition to any library's collection of dystopian fiction.--Jacqueline Snider

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from November 15, 2023
Lebanese-born French author Maalouf delivers an elegant portrait of a dying world. Alec Zander, a pseudonymous genius who's given up law and economics for cartooning, lives in self-imposed exile on a tiny island off the coast of France "called, curiously enough, Antioch." He's lived there alone for years, courtesy of a chance purchase his father made at the end of World War II, but now he has a neighbor, an archly mysterious woman named, meaningfully, �ve. As Maalouf's novel opens, another mystery is at play: The electricity is out, the satellites are dead, the radio is silent. When it finally comes crackling back a few days later, it brings dire news of nuclear war--one that hasn't gone to the worst-case scenario thanks to the intervention of a kind of parallel human species who have powers beyond those of ordinary mortals. All--like Agamemnon, a fellow Alec knows from a bar on a neighboring island--have Greek names. Talking to an old friend well placed in the U.S. government, Alec learns of one such emissary to Washington: "He says he's called Demosthenes....He certainly doesn't look much like any Greeks I know. He has copper-colored skin and speaks English like he's spent his entire life in Massachusetts." Hmmm. These other-humans seem to mean well, but for their troubles, "the uninvited," ruled by a demigoddess and for all purposes immortal, come under attack by the very people they're trying to save, and the world spirals into further madness. Maalouf's near-future yarn is reminiscent of Arturo P�rez-Reverte in its matter-of-fact presentation of the improbable, but the overarching warning is quite of our world and time: As the ever-pensive �ve remarks, "Future historians will say our civilization was so worm-eaten that it took only a flick of the wrist for the whole edifice to collapse." A beguiling, lyrical work of speculative fiction by a writer of international importance.

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