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The Habitation of the Blessed
Jan. 12th, 2012 10:16Valente, Catherynne M. The Habitation of the Blessed. San Francisco: Nightshade Books, 2010.
The Letter of Prester John has to be one of the most famous and influential hoaxes in history. Briefly, in the middle of the 12th century, the Emperor in Constantinople received a most singular letter from a man who claimed to be the priest-king of a fabulous realm in the East, which as all good Christians know is where the Apostle Doubting Thomas the Twin disappeared on his quest to convert people, greeting his fellow monarch and promising him riches while handily implying that he, Prester John, was a Nestorian. The letter was a fake from start to finish, but the legend of Prester John inspired Christian questors for centuries, until the world was girdled and there was no more empty space on the map, or belief that a mythical Christian realm could fill it.
This novel takes the opposite premise: what if the letter were true, what if the fabulous realm it described did in fact exist?
The novel is framed by the tale of Brother Hiob of Luzerne in 1699, whose missionary work in the Himalaya in 1699 brings him into contact with a tree guarded by a woman in yellow which bears book-fruit. Hiob is permitted to take three books, and struggles to recopy them before book-mould devours them. The first is the tale of John himself, a ragged, cowardly pilgrim unfortunately convinced that he is a good man and that Christianity is the one truth faith. The second is the tale of his future wife Hagia, a blemmye who is first a scribe and then a queen, and her life in the fantastic realm of Pentexore, where every three hundred years the immortal denizens of the realm put off their lives and relationships by a Lottery and don new ones as you or I might change shirts. The third takes place many centuries earlier and is the collected stories of the panoti Imtithal, royal nursemaid and sometime companion of Doubting Thomas himself. All three stories are connected in ways that would spoil the lovely, rich delights of this book and of Valente's prose.
( This is either Hell, or Paradise )
The Letter of Prester John has to be one of the most famous and influential hoaxes in history. Briefly, in the middle of the 12th century, the Emperor in Constantinople received a most singular letter from a man who claimed to be the priest-king of a fabulous realm in the East, which as all good Christians know is where the Apostle Doubting Thomas the Twin disappeared on his quest to convert people, greeting his fellow monarch and promising him riches while handily implying that he, Prester John, was a Nestorian. The letter was a fake from start to finish, but the legend of Prester John inspired Christian questors for centuries, until the world was girdled and there was no more empty space on the map, or belief that a mythical Christian realm could fill it.
This novel takes the opposite premise: what if the letter were true, what if the fabulous realm it described did in fact exist?
The novel is framed by the tale of Brother Hiob of Luzerne in 1699, whose missionary work in the Himalaya in 1699 brings him into contact with a tree guarded by a woman in yellow which bears book-fruit. Hiob is permitted to take three books, and struggles to recopy them before book-mould devours them. The first is the tale of John himself, a ragged, cowardly pilgrim unfortunately convinced that he is a good man and that Christianity is the one truth faith. The second is the tale of his future wife Hagia, a blemmye who is first a scribe and then a queen, and her life in the fantastic realm of Pentexore, where every three hundred years the immortal denizens of the realm put off their lives and relationships by a Lottery and don new ones as you or I might change shirts. The third takes place many centuries earlier and is the collected stories of the panoti Imtithal, royal nursemaid and sometime companion of Doubting Thomas himself. All three stories are connected in ways that would spoil the lovely, rich delights of this book and of Valente's prose.
( This is either Hell, or Paradise )