Aegypt, vol. 1: The Solitudes - John Crowley

Written by John Crowley
Read by John Crowley
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

This is the first novel in John Crowley’s Ægypt tetralogy. Confusingly, and against the author’s wishes, it has been released under the same name as the tetralogy itself. Its alternative, and more correct, title is The Solitudes.

It follows Pierce Moffett, a college history professor in his retreat from ordinary, academic life to pastoral life of Faraway Hills. While in the area, Pierce comes up with a plan to write a book about Hermeticism, in the process finding several parallels with his own project and that of the nearly forgotten local novelist Fellowes Kraft.

The novel takes place in two time periods and features three main protagonists; that of Pierce’s in the late 20th century, and that of John Dee, Edward Kelley and Giordano Bruno as from the historical novels of Kraft in the Renaissance. The difference is marked stylistically by dashes indicating dialogue for events that happened in the Renaissance and events in the 20th century marked by dialogue in quotation marks.

It was nominated for the 1988 Arthur C. Clarke Award and the 1988 World Fantasy Award. Harold Bloom included the novel in the last “Chaotic” Canon in the appendices of Western Canon.

R.I.P. John Crowley (1942 - 2026)

Length: 15 hrs 30 mins
First published: 1987