| | Onlne Shopping In UK Store - Online shopping various discount products in UK such as apparel,shoes,bags,baby products,books,computer & video games,DVD,electronics,home and garden products,health and beauty products,jewellery and watches,kitchen and houseware,music,outdoor living,sport and leisure,software,tools and hardware,toys and games, and VHS. Online Shopping In UK Store associates with Amazon.co.uk and other famous companies which provide you with the security, reliability, selection and great prices. |
|
|
The Dream of Scipio | 
 enlarge | Author: Iain Pears
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: £8.99
Buy Used: £0.01
You Save: ?8.98 (100%)
New (12) Used (64) from £0.01
Rating:  reviews
Sales Rank: 89080
Media: Paperback
Edition: New edition
Pages: 384
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.1 x 1.1
ISBN: 0099284588
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN: 9780099284581
ASIN: 0099284588
Publication Date: April 3, 2003
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
| |
| Features:
| • | New | | • | Mint Condition | | • | Dispatch same day for order received before 12 noon | | • | Guaranteed packaging | | • | No quibbles returns |
|
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
| |
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
A novel set in Provence at three different critical moments of Western Civilisation - the collapse of the Roman Empire in the fifth century, the Black Death in the fourteenth, and the Second World War in the twentieth. It follows the fortunes of three men, and each man's story is linked by the classical text that gives the book its title.
Amazon.co.uk Review
With his admirable craftsmanship and the rich emotional life Iain Pears grants his beautifully drawn characters, he has created a considerable following for his remarkable novels. The Dream of Scipio is a novel of great ambition that simultaneously engages the emotional and intellectual capacities of the reader while always remaining compulsively readable. Set in Provence at three crucial moments of Western civilisation (the final collapse of the Roman Empire in the fifth century, the Black Death in the 14th century, and the Second World War in the 20th), Pears presents the lives of three men. Manlius Hippomanes is an aristocrat, obsessively concerned with the preservation of Roman civilisation; Olivier de Noyen is a poet; and Julian Barneuve is an intellectual who makes the mistake of joining the corrupt Vichy government. Pears weaves his dazzling and discursive narrative through the troubled lives of each man, the common thread being the classical text which is the book's title-- a work of challenging philosophical inquiry. The other common denominator is the love each man has for a remarkable woman. It is difficult to know where to begin in praising the achievement of this rigorous but infinitely beguiling book. The novel of ideas has been moribund for quite some time, but Pears breathes rude life into the genre with an epic that echoes the achievements of Robert Graves and André Gide. The balance between the key questions of existence and the passionate, life-affirming solidity that the author grants to his characters is impeccable, and all three protagonists are forcefully characterised. But above all, this is a piece of storytelling that almost redefines the very notion of the art: luminescent entertainment by a master, even more impressive than An Instance of the Fingerpost, the book which first drew attention to Pears' highly individual skills.--Barry Forshaw
|
| Customer Reviews:
 Wonderful! August 19, 2010
Per Birkhaug
The dream of Scipio is highly recommended for anyone interested in drama and suspense, history, philosophy, and who enjoy the beautiful language English can be. Iain Pears has become one of my favourite authors.
 Erudite, credible, in places even witty October 12, 2007
Rgh1066 (Monterrey)
The Dream of Scipio is the first Iain Pears novel I have read, and it is safe to say that it will not be my last. Erudite, credible, in places even witty, it held my attention over a period of time when I really should have been doing more professional reading - and I somehow did not feel the slightest bit guilty.
The three interwoven narratives - more or less equally spaced across a span of 1500 years of Provencal history, are juxtaposed so that the reader is lifted from one and placed in another with the bare minimum of recapping devices. The narratives are all engaging but of the three protagonists who have a solid connection with the Dream of Scipio manuscript, Manlius is the least credible and Julien the most. Pears draws portraits of various political pragmatists across the ages, and the reader is invited to draw parallels between Manlius' deal brokering with Gundobad; Olivier's with Pope Clement; and Julien's with Marcel.
Each of these opens up profound moral questions about the nature of good and evil, and the duty of those who remain silent in the face of moral repugnance. But Pears' tone is not itself moralistic and he is never didactic. Rather he lays the scene before us - utterly credible despite being cast in a fictional context, and challenges us with uncomfortable questions about the moral high ground claimed by the French Resistance over the collaborateurs, the reformers over the Papists or even the opposing merits and demerits of civilisation and barbarity.
This is a very good novel, and also, for all its fictionality not a bad text for a foundation course in moral philosophy!
A truly marvellous book August 5, 2007
Cleona Wallace (Galway, Ireland)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book is undoubtedly one of the finest I have read in many years, and I agree with one of the other reviewers in feeling that it will stay with me for years to come (and certainly be re-read). In terms of scope - history, philosophy, sociology, religion - it puts me in mind of Irish Murdoch at her best, weighty issues couched within the form of a thoroughly readable and gripping novel.
I have lived in Rome for six years, where I work as a tour guide, spending much of my time thinking and reading about the fall of Rome, the Roman Catholic Church and civilisation in general, yet this book has given me much to think about and has definitely added depth to my own understanding.
I cannot recommend it highly enough.
SUPERB September 2, 2006
M. J. Walley (Pershore,Worcs.)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
What an amazing book. I got to the end and turned back to page one without even putting the kettle on.
Fascinating blend of philosophy, morality & historic fiction. August 24, 2006
Themis-Athena (from somewhere between California and Germany)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Like probably nothing else, the breakdown of social order forces us to reach into ourselves, to draw for guidance on our innermost beliefs and moral values; for absent direction by the established rules of society, we only have ourselves to turn to for advice. - Such is the situation in which find themselves this book's three protagonists: Manlius Hippomanes, Olivier de Noyen and Julien Barneuve; and each resolves the resulting conflict in a different fashion, based as much on his personal nature as his deeply-held convictions and values.
Manlius is a 5th century Roman aristocrat, living during the final years of the Roman Empire. Originally a man of letters more than political or religious leader, he is a member of a dying class: educated in Neoplatonism and the classical Roman tradition, cultured, and placing the survival of civilization - as embodied in traditional Roman virtues - above everything else. Yet, as his city, Vaison, and the rest of Provence comes under the dual onslaught of the Visigoths under Euric and the Burgundians under Gundobad, he abandons (if only publicly) his pagan beliefs and seeks appointment as Bishop, realizing that with the secular power of the Roman Republic weakened beyond recovery, only the Catholic church's growing influence provides a sufficient basis for his ultimate goal: to maintain the essence of Roman civilization and culture while formally accepting the weight of the new political forces; by forming an alliance with Roman-educated Gundobad to save at least part of Provence from destruction by the Visigoths, and to ensure the continuance of Roman law and values under Burgundian administration. (As the author implicitly admits, this book's Manlius is loosely based on St. Avitus of Vienne, who lived approximately 50 years later, actually was an advisor to Gundobad, later converted Gundobad's son and successor Sigismund to Christianity, and whose most prominent piece of writing is a five-book-long poem on Original Sin, Expulsion from Paradise, the Deluge and the Crossing of the Red Sea which, 1100 years later, in part probably inspired Milton's "Paradise Lost.")
Strongly influenced by his muse's, Neoplatonian philosopher Sophia's teachings, Manlius lays down his own philosophy in sermons and letters - and in a treatise he entitles "The Dream of Scipio," for the like-named excerpt from Cicero's "Republica" describing - in the voice of Scipio Africanus - the great Roman's vision of the universe and the rewards of immortality awaiting the good statesman. But unlike Cicero's "Somnium Scipionis," Manlius's manuscript doesn't take the form of a dream by Scipio Junior about a conversation with Scipio Africanus but that of a dream *about* Scipio; or rather, a conversation between Sophia and Manlius about Scipio's comments on the fall of Carthage. And while in Manlius's penmanship the treatise thus contains primarily a discourse on the fall of Rome (and a response to Saint Augustine's "City of God"), this book's two other protagonists, Olivier and Julien, in turn come to appreciate its significance as a treatise on the fall of civilization in general: For Manlius holds that civilization is a purpose in and of itself, to be perpetuated either by action premised on this singular aim, or by teaching.
Olivier and Julien, however, draw different conclusions from Manlius's treatise than did its author for his own time. Olivier, a 14th century poet in the Avignon household of powerful Cardinal Ceccani (but like Manlius originally from Vaison) sees his world fall apart as the plague descends upon the South of France, while Ceccani and his rival Cardinal de Deaux vie for influence in the court of Pope Clement VI. Caught between the lines of political intrigue and the menace of the Black Death are Olivier's Jewish teacher Gersonides and his servant Rebecca. And unlike his master Ceccani, who (similar to Manlius) will sacrifice individuals for a perceived greater aim, Olivier takes the opposite approach, sacrificing himself for an act of humanity and placing the well-being of two individuals - Rebecca and Gersonides - over his master's far-reaching goals. Julien finally, a scholar who has retired to his hometown Vaison to outwait the horrors of the Third Reich and the Vichy Regime, is the most reluctant of all to take action, preferring instead to make his small contribution to the preservation of civilization through teaching. But eventually he is goaded into collaboration with the regime on the grounds that whatever he doesn't consent to do will be done by someone with true national-socialist fervor - only to realize too late, after his lover, Jewish painter Julia Bronsen has been sent to a "labor" camp, that evil actions taken for honorable reasons often constitute the greatest of all evils.
But it is not only "The Dream of Scipio" - written by Manlius, unearthed by Olivier and Julien - and the moral choices they face that unite this novel's three protagonists. Of similarly symbolic importance is the fate of the Jewish population, society's eternal all-purpose scapegoat (persecuted by Manlius, protected by Clement VI after Olivier's act of self-sacrifice and left to perish by Julien's failure to act); and each man is strongly influence by a dark-haired muse, an outsider of society in her own way. And then, there is a little chapel just outside Vaison: consecrated to Sophia (whom, like Manlius, Christian oral tradition has made into a saint for her manifold acts of goodwill), rediscovered by Olivier, decorated by his painter-friend Luca Pisano, and temporary sanctuary to Julien and Julia.
Iain Pears masterfully weaves together the fates of the three men, three pivotal historical moments - observed in the single nucleus of one Southern French town - and philosophical questions as old as civilization itself into this spellbinding successor to his equally stunning "Instance of the Fingerpost." Yet, his writing isn't ponderous or heavy-handed; and while some prior understanding of the philosophical concepts discussed may enhance the book's enjoyment, no great expertise in Neoplatonism or Catholic theology is required on the reader's side. This is historic fiction at its best: engaging, thoughtful and well-researched to boot.
|
|
|
| |
