Civilizations

Around the year 1000, the daughter of Erik the Red sails south. 1492: Columbus does not discover America. 1531: the Incas invade Europe. Give the Indians the horse, iron and antibodies, and all the history of the world must be rewritten. Civilizations is the novel of that hypothesis: Atahualpa lands in the Europe of Charles V and finds the Spanish Inquisition, Luther’s Reformation, nascent capitalism, exhausted monarchies and oppressed, famished populations ready to revolt. From Cuzco to Aix-la-Chapelle and the Battle of Lepanto, here is the tale of globalization reversed, by the author of HHhH. Prix de l’Académie française.