Aegypt (Bantam Spectra Book) [Hardcover]

John Crowley (Author)

Book Description

Series: Bantam Spectra Book | Publication Date: March 1, 1987

There is more than one history of the world.

Before science defined the modern age, other powers, wondrous and magical, once governed the universe, their lore perfected within a lost capital of hieroglyphs, wizard-kings, and fabulous monuments, not Egypt -- but Ægypt.

What if it were really so?

In the 1970s, a historian named Pierce Moffett moves to the New England countryside to write a book about Ægypt, driven by an idea he dare not believe -- that the physical laws of the universe once changed and may change again. Yet the notion is not his alone. Something waits at the locked estate of Fellowes Kraft, author of romances about Will Shakespeare and Giordano Bruno and Dr. John Dee, something for which Pierce and those near him have long sought without knowing it, a key, perhaps, to Ægypt.

ElectricStory.com proudly presents the definitive text of John Crowley's Ægypt, newly edited and corrected in consultation with the author.

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Reengaging the motifs of alternate lives, worlds and world-views that pulsed through his remarkable Little, Big, Crowley's new novel shapes itself around unorthodox historian Pierce Moffett, who seeks to explain the secret histories of the world, the old notions of science, religion and philosophy that have survived in astrology, myths and superstition; not the real, geographical Egypt, but AEgypt, the cognate country of the imagination from which the gypsies came. In resonating stories nested one inside the other, Crowley describes Blackbury Jambs, Pa., where among ex-students turned shepherds and mystics turned babysitters, Pierce finally finds himself part of a community and rediscovers the source of his quest, the historical novels of local writer Fellowes Kraft, who has his own stories to tellof young Will Shakespeare, Elizabethan Doctor John Dee's desire to speak with angels and Giordano Bruno's thirst to understand his world, for which he would be burned as a heretic. Affecting, cerebral, surprising and delightful, this extraordinary philosophical romance suggests an unlikely but thriving marriage between a writer like Anne Tyler and one such as Jorge Luis Borges.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

Affecting, cerebral, surprising, and delightful, this extraordinary philosophical romance suggests an unlikely but thriving marriage between a writer like Anne Tyler and one such as Jorge Luis Borges. --Publishers Weekly

The writing here is intricate and thoughtful, allusive and ironic. The novel's message has genuine weight and appeal. AEGYPT bears many resemblances, incidental and substantive, to Thomas Pynchon's wonderful 1966 novel THE CRYING OF LOT 49. --USA Today

AEGYPT is a must; it is a land of questions, more questions and mysteries, because crafting mysteries is what John Crowley, an original moralist of the same giddy heights occupied by Thomas Mann and Robertson Davies, does best. --San Francisco Chronicle

Extraordinary storytelling. --Los Angeles Times

A dizzying experience, achieved with unerring security of technique.... The narrative startles the reader again and again with the eloquent rightness of the web of coincidences that structure it. [A New York Times Notable Book of 1987] --New York Times Book Review --This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 390 pages
• Publisher: Spectra (March 1, 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553051946
• ISBN-13: 978-0553051940
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,491,127 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

John Crowley was born in the appropriately liminal town of Presque Isle, Maine, in 1942, his father then an officer in the US Army Air Corps. He grew up in Vermont, northeastern Kentucky and (for the longest stretch) Indiana, where he went to high school and college. He moved to New York City after college to make movies, and did find work in documentary films, an occupation he still pursues. He published his first novel (The Deep) in 1975, and his 14th volume of fiction (Lord Byron's Novel: The Evening Land) in 2005. Since 1993 he has taught creative writing at Yale University. In 1992 he received the Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. He finds it more gratifying that almost all his work is still in print.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Crowley's magic sparkles once again, March 15, 1999

By 

Richard G. Elen "Sounds On" (Cambridge, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Aegypt (Paperback)

Crowley's early books were definitely in the "SF" genre, but as time has gone by we more and more frequently find him in the "Literature" section of many bookstores.

If this is a compliment, it is one that is well-deserved. Crowley's writing has a magical quality that creates a unique atmosphere unlike almost any other (the nearest comparison might be Keith Roberts' "Pavane").

"Aegypt" appeared as an individual volume with virtually no clue to the fact that it had a sequel ("Love and Sleep") or that in fact these two books were the first of a four-volume set (the third, "Daemonomania", seems to have been delayed - it appeared in Books In Print in 1998 but has, according to Bantam, been "withdrawn").

The books are set in two worlds - a small-town, modern, north-east US environment and the world of Renaissance magicians like Dr John Dee. At the heart of the series is the idea that great changes of direction in human civilisation - such as the Renaissance or the advent of the Age of Reason - not only place culture on a different path into the future, but also, looking over our shoulders as it were, we see a different past. This is a concept that, in itself, has serious philosophical merit.

Thus the past of "Aegypt" is a magical, occult "alternate history of the world" with which modern materialist society has lost touch - or nearly so.

Crowley weaves the threads of both realities together in an astonishing and unique way that holds the reader in thrall, wishing it would never end.

All his books are worth reading, but this one - and its sequel(s) - especially so.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars First movement of a celestial symphony, December 24, 1999

By 

Karen Bowe - See all my reviews

This review is from: Aegypt (Paperback)

In Aegypt, John Crowley creates not one, but two solid, fleshly worlds: a late seventies small town, complex enough to hold both the foolishness of failed coke dealer, scholar and desperate monogamist Pierce Moffett, and the ordinary heroic strength of newly single mother and artist Rosie Rasmussen; and the world of John Dee, court magician to Queen Elizabeth. Crowley's virtousic realism renders Dee's conversations with the angels and alchemical searching as sturdy and believable as Rose and Pierce's grocery shopping, angst, and romantic turnarounds. Both worlds can be balanced in the same book because both worlds are there to tell the same story. What is that story? What did the angels tell to John Dee? Who can catch a falling star? For all its realism, this is a book about occult knowledge. This book is an initiation. John Crowley is attempting a direct transmission of gnosis through literature. Does he succeed?

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Synchronicity, November 16, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Aegypt (Paperback)

Initially, Aegypt is an all-out barrage of images and information, in the midst of which it is difficult to assimilate the major themes that are developing. However, as you continue your journey along with Pierce Moffett, this mass of somewhat obscure imagery and information slowly begins to unravel. The miracle of Crowley's prose is that he guides the reader through a series of small revelations along with the main character that culminate in one entire running synchronistic metaphor. His brilliant excerpts from other sources, ie. his own fictional writer Fellowes Kraft, serve as slivers of allegory relating to Pierce and some of the other characters in the book's main story. Crowley patiently weaves a web of coincidences, of synchronicity, that serves as a sturdy metaphoric foundation to support all of the synapse-igniting ideas presented to the reader to be delineated and digested. This novel is so cleverly plotted, that I cannot help but wonder if it is somehow based on the ancient geometric principles that are discussed and reffered to throughout the book. This is not even to speak of the potential Jungian archetypes presented by the characters surrounding Pierce. Rosie as anima, Spofford animus, Pierce the ego, Fellowes Kraft the Shadow? Even these archetypes do not do the interconnectedness of the characters justice. In the Prologue in Heaven, when the skryer is looking into the stone, he sees an angel who holds another stone, in which there is a child with yet another stone, and within that stone the immense void, the eternal truth. Just as this ancient knowledge of Aegypt that Pierce is uncovering comes through himself, Kraft, Bruno, and so on. One more running metaphor to drive it all home is the reoccuring imagery of bouncing balls with stripes and stars, croquet balls colliding, and finally the dozens of hot air balloons filling the sky, again synchronicity. Crowley sets his sights high, and does not disappoint.

P.S. Pierce (Inverarity) Moffett, Rosie MUCHO. See The Crying of Lot 49. The horn from 49 and the ring symbol in Aegypt. Many similarities.