The Solitudes
Book description
Reengaging the ideas of alternate lives, worlds, and worldviews that pulsed through his remarkable Little, Big, John Crowley’s Ægypt series is a landmark in contemporary fiction. The series helped earn Crowley the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature, and Harold Bloom installed the first two books in…
Why read it?
1 author picked The Solitudes as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
Crowley is the author of the timeless classic Little, Big, of course (which is also essential reading), but his novel, The Solitudes, began a tetralogy that explores history, alternate history, and the grand Hermetic framework which contains it all.
Centering around a historian working to connect an alternate imagined world, Ægypt, with the real one today, Crowley’s readers take a deep dive into the Renaissance world of Giordano Bruno, Doctor Dee, Shakespeare, and others, while simultaneously exploring the arcane world of the present.
It feels strangely akin to something Umberto Eco might come up with if he ever…
From Polly's list on modern fantasy for people who dislike modern fantasy.
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