Laurent Binet's Civilisations: A Review

Laurence Binet, Civilisations (London: Harvill Secker, 2021). 310 pages. Translated from the French by Sam Taylor.

I have no doubt it must be lost of fun to write fictional History while being fully aware that your reader is not to demand any verisimilitude of what you write. Art for art’s sake, I guess. Binet’s Civilisations is one such work: it’s offhand in its fun, bold in its ingenuity but invariably overambitious in its purpose and meaning.

The premise is simple: instead of the various European powers conquering the continents across the Atlantic, it is the Incas (and subsequently the Aztecs) who sail across the waters eastwards and reach Lisbon in the wake of a dreadful tsunami. Atahualpa, their king, is undefeatable in his thirst for some sort of black drink monks seem to be very good at producing; vanquishing the Spanish emperor is way too easy. The road to Europe lays expedite thereafter.

But centuries before, the Vikings had reached the north with Erik the Red’s daughter as their leader. Her descendants eventually make their way to Panama, only to be stopped by the Darién Gap (the present-day irony of this is magnificent, one must admit!).

The second part of the book takes us with Columbus in his first voyage of discovery. Unlike what actually happened, Columbus does not make it back to Spain, fails miserably in his attempts to convert the locals to what the Incas will later call the weird cult of the “nailed god”. The Spanish Court gives up on the extremely expensive adventure of crossing the ocean and loses its interest in western lands.

A couple of decades later, having been defeated by his brother, Atahualpa the Incan emperor is escaping Peru in Columbus’s ships and heads eastward. Thanks to endless supplies of gold, the emperor succeeds in conquering the lands and the minds of Castilians, Italians, Frenchs and Germans. His trick to unite the continent five centuries before actual History occurred? He does away with feudal taxation and the property of land, decrees religious freedom all over the place (the only mandatory rule is to adore the Sun) and develops the land with a view to eradicate hunger and poverty.

Atahualpa. Would he have really achieved so much in so little time?

But suddenly, another enemy from the West appears: the Aztecs arrive in England and decide to conquer France with their army (led by Cuauhtémoc). Paris is quickly taken, and a huge pyramid is bult near the Louvre, which will become the venue for their favourite pastime: human sacrifice. With the supply chains of gold interrupted, Atahualpa reacts and brings back taxation to fund the war effort. Sounds kind of familiar, doesn’t it?

Nonsensical? Maybe, but it’s good fun to read. The somewhat unexpected coda of the book brings Cervantes, El Greco and Montaigne together in the Frenchman’s castle. Their interaction prophesies modernity in all its expressions and raises the stakes even further by taking the painter and the Spanish novelist to Mexico in search of a better life.

The text was splendidly rendered by Sam Taylor into English, yet one glaring syntactic error kept nagging (quite likely the result of a overzealous proof-reader?) This is found on page 175 of the public library copy I read: “He [Atahualpa] distributed Golden Fleeces, a highly prized distinction that cost him nothing and possessed the advantage of binding him to whomever received it.” My italics.

Publicado en castellano por Seix Barral (traducido por Adolfo García Ortega). Publicat en català per Edicions de 1984 (traduït per Mia Tarradas).