"Are you saying 'Low-Rent Beignet?'"

Long ago I read HHhH by Laurent Binet.

It was good.

Now I am reading Civilizations, also by Laurent Binet. In translation.

I don’t know much French.

I know how to say “voila.”

But it’s an interesting-ass book. At first, as I was reading it, I thought to myself, Wait. What is this, an alternate history novel? Does this guy think he’s Harry fucking Turtlepower?

And it seems like he does think he’s Harry fucking Squirtledove, because his novel is an alternate history novel, in which some Vikings, first off, travel all the way to Panama, introducing the indigenous people of Cuba and elsewhere to European diseases centuries prior to when that really happened. And so the people of those places have developed immunity to things like smallpox by the time Columbus arrives, and they also learned ironworking from the Vikings, so that when Columbus shows up they’re better equipped to resist him. And they do, and so no conquistadores follow him. And several generations after Columbus dies in South America, some of the descendants of the people who watched him fail to find the gold he wanted journey to Europe.

And it’s at that point that I see what this novel is up to. The people of Europe are depicted in this account of the Incans journeying there the way the people of the Americas were depicted in accounts by Europeans. They’re not given names or distinguished very clearly from one another. The king and queen of Portugal arrive, to meet the travelers from elsewhere, and there’s no real significance granted to that event. They’re just two more people who walk up to the Incans and start babbling at them.

In short, this book’s pretty cool.

At the moment, I have nothing further to say about it.