| The Dream of Scipio |  | Author: Iain Pears
Publisher: Riverhead Trade
Category: Book
List Price: $16.00
Buy New: $3.16
as of 5/27/2012 11:26 EDT details
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Seller: u_pick
Sales Rank: 259,837
Languages: English (Unknown), English (Original Language), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Pages: 416
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6.1 x 0.9
ISBN: 1573229865
EAN: 9781573229869
ASIN: 1573229865
Publication Date: June 3, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Features:
| • | Thrilling | | • | Beautiful | | • | Well Written |
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Product Description
In The Dream of Scipio, "Pears's finest book yet" (The Boston Globe), the acclaimed author of An Instance of the Fingerpost intertwines three intellectual mysteries, three love stories—and three of the darkest moments in human history. United by a classical text called "The Dream of Scipio," three men struggle to find refuge for their hearts and minds from the madness that surrounds them...in the final days of the Roman Empire, in the grim years of the Black Death, and in the direst hours of World War II.
Amazon.com Review
Like his elegant debut, An Instance of the Fingerpost, Iain Pears's The Dream of Scipio is an inventive, gloriously detailed historical novel told from multiple viewpoints. But Pears has set himself an additional challenge by spreading his narrators over several centuries: there's the fifth century French nobleman and bishop, Manlius, a civilized man who has embraced the uncouth Christian faith in order to protect what he holds dear; an 11th-century scholar and troubadour named Olivier de Noyen, the famously ill-fated admirer of a married girl; and Julien Barneuve, an early 20th-century scholar of de Noyen who discovers, through him, a magnificent manuscript of Manlius's called "The Dream of Scipio." Though all three men come from the same small Provençal town, it is this manuscript, derived from the teachings of a wise woman, that links the three narrative threads of Pears's story. At the heart of The Dream of Scipio and, one suspects, at the heart of its author, is the conflict between a classical ideal of learning and the contemplation of beauty, and the noisy, uncivilized, democratizing impulses of the Christian era. A novel of ideas like its predecessor, The Dream of Scipio is neither chilly nor didactic and doesn't shy away from depicting the costs of its narrators' unpopular devotions. --Regina Marler
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