About
Reviews
Search
Submit
Home

Mystery Books for Sale

[ Home ]
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]


  

VOLTAIRE'S CALLIGRAPHER
by Pablo de Santis
Harper Perennial, October 2010
149 pages
$14.99
ISBN: 0061479888


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Pablo de Santis' latest translated work is a slim bit of steampunk -- the subgenre that mixes alternate history with futuristic inventions -- combined with philosophy and surrealism.

Our narrator is Dalessius, a 20-year-old calligrapher sent to work for the philosopher Voltaire, who is in exile in Geneva. Dalessius has just been released from jail. An experiment with ink resulted in his having been accused of conspiracy when he mistakenly wrote out a death order in invisible ink. But Voltaire trusts Dalessius enough to send him on a mission to Toulouse to investigate why the court wants to execute a Protestant named Jean Calas, who is accused of murdering his own son. Dalessius' mission isn't entirely successful, as Calas is executed. (In real life, there was a Jean Calas and he was wrongly accused of killing his son, who had committed suicide. And Voltaire did lead a campaign against religious intolerance after the Calas affair, helping to overturn Calas' conviction. But the rest of the calligrapher's tale is fiction.)

Following Calas' execution, Voltaire next dispatches his calligrapher to Paris, believing the death to be part of a greater plot against those who, like himself, champion reason and religious freedom. Dalessius follows the trail of Von Knepper, an inventor who has created a beautiful female automaton that enchants the young scribe. What follows is a convoluted plot as twisty and fog-filled as the streets that Dalessius walks. And while De Santis' make-believe world doesn't always make sense, it's an interesting place to visit.

At 149 pages, it's also a quick read, and has been well translated by Lisa Carter (recently released in English, the novel first came out in 2001). VOLTAIRE'S CALLIGRAPHER never rises to the level of De Santis' THE PARIS ENIGMA, an enchanting novel about a detectives' group. But if you've ever wondered what might have happened had the famous philosopher had a calligrapher/detective, you might enjoy this one by De Santis.

§ Lourdes Venard is a newspaper editor in Long Island, N.Y.

Reviewed by Lourdes Venard, January 2011

[ Top ]


QUICK SEARCH:

 

Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
[ Home ]