The Affirmation

by Christopher Priest

Peter Sinclair is tormented by bereavement and failure. In an attempt to conjure some meaning from his life, he embarks on an autobiography, but he finds himself writing the story of another man in another, imagined, world whose insidious attraction draws him even further in...

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Fantasy, 20th Century, Speculative Fiction, British Literature, Novels

213 pages, Paperback

First published May 25, 1981

About the author

Christopher Priest was born in Cheshire, England. He began writing soon after leaving school and has been a full-time freelance writer since 1968.

He has published eleven novels, four short story collections and a number of other books, including critical works, biographies, novelizations and children’s non-fiction.

He has written drama for radio (BBC Radio 4) and television (Thames TV and HTV). In 2006, The Prestige was made into a major production by Newmarket Films. Directed by Christopher Nolan, The Prestige went straight to No.1 US box office. It received two Academy Award nominations. Other novels, including Fugue For a Darkening Island and The Glamour, are currently in preparation for filming.

He is Vice-President of the H. G. Wells Society. In 2007, an exhibition of installation art based on his novel The Affirmation was mounted in London.

As a journalist he has written features and reviews for The Times, the Guardian, the Independent, the New Statesman, the Scotsman, and many different magazines.

Reviews

[Glenn Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

“There was a duplication of myself involved, perhaps even a triplication. There was I who was writing. There was I whom I could remember. And there was I of whom I wrote, the protagonist of the story.”
― Christopher Priest, The Affirmation

Among the most remarkable novels I’ve ever encountered. Here are the opening lines: “This much I know for sure: My name is Peter Sinclair. I am English and I am, or I was, twenty-nine years old. Already there is an uncertainty and my sureness recedes. Age is a variable; I am no longer twenty-nine.”

However, with each page we turn, the more we discover that, along with Peter’s age, nearly everything else is variable - other than the unfolding drama narrated at a slow pace in a rather flat voice by the brooding, morose Peter, a man who has recently lost his father, his girlfriend and his job as a chemist for a large pharmaceutical company, the surrounding people, places and things in his life repeatedly shift and glide in diverse and assorted combinations. Novel as jigsaw puzzle with all identical interlocking pieces. Put it together any way you like and watch the emerging picture change each time.

Sound extraordinary? It is extraordinary. So much so, rather than commenting on developing story line or overall plot, below are several pieces of the jigsaw taken from the opening chapters to serve as enticement to treat yourself to Christopher Priest’s out-of-this-world imagination as you read his tour-de-force novel. Looking at your own life may never be the same again.

Imagination is the Key - Peter escapes dirty, stinking, noisy London to a rundown, dilapidated secluded country cottage thanks to a friend of his father’s. For Peter, this is a time for contemplation and inwardness. Obliged to do some restoration, repair and painting in lieu of rent, Peter imagines what the rooms of the cottage will ultimately look like when restored. He completes one room with a final coat of white paint and is elated - what he had imagined for the room came to be realized. Ah, so it’s imagination first; realization second! With this insight, to bring a measure of order and clarity to his own life, Peter goes about imagining his past, sifting through his memories in a way that isn’t too rigid or pedantic on one side nor too wild and anarchic on the other.

Flash of Realization – Trying to remember all those details – things like your teachers and all the children in each of your classes in grade school along with the subjects you learned - and keep it all straight in your mind is nearly impossible. Peter makes a critical discovery – he should have to write it all down. Time to dig out that typewriter his older sister Felicity gave him the previous Christmas. Peter reflects: “I wrote because of an inner need, and that need was to create a clearer vision of myself, and in writing I became what I wrote.” And the more Peter writes, the more he recognizes a simple recounting of facts is insufficient; what he needs is story. Thus, Peter’s writing moves from nonfiction to fiction, a fictional autobiography distilling a “higher truth.”

New World; New Man – Creative juices flowing, imagination on fire, Peter invents a parallel world where England becomes Faiandland, London becomes Jethra, older sister Felicity becomes Kalia and girlfriend Gracia becomes Seri. To the south of Faiandland, there is a vast network of islands, each island an independent country. To all the inhabitants of Jethra and Peter’s protagonist, another Peter Sinclair, the islands signify wish and escape. Sitting at his typewriter in his white room, Peter thinks: “I had found myself, explained myself, and in a very personal sense of the word I had defined myself." Quite the transition for a man who spent years as a chemist for a pharmaceutical company!

Major Disruption - But then it happens - older sister Felicity pulls up with her car and beholds her brother living in the middle of filth, including a mountain of empty whisky bottles piled up in the backyard. Forever overly judgmental, Felicity eyes his white room as a complete garbage dump. Peter recoils: “She was perceiving it wrongly. I had learned how to write my manuscript by observing my white room. Felicity saw only narrow or actual truth. She was unreceptive to higher truth, to imaginative coherence, and she would certainly fail to understand the kinds of truth I told in my manuscript.” Felicity insists Peter leave the cottage and come live the clean life with her family. Peter acquiesces but resolves no one other than himself would ever read his manuscript.

Voyage to Dream Archipelago – Peter is the other Peter in his created world, on a ship south of Jethra. Now that he has won the lottery, he is headed for an island where he will undergo a surgical operation that will give him immortality. Quite a prize! However, the operation comes with a price: he will lose all his memory. Peter’s past will have to be reconstructed from the information he completes in a detailed questionnaire. Peter tells medical staff there is no need – just so happens he has a manuscript he wrote two summers ago containing his autobiography!

Again, these are mere snapshots from the narrative. The plot curves, twists, bends, warps and thickens in penetrating ways not only for Peter but for a reader. At one point in the Dream Archipelago, after his operation, Peter wakes up in a white room with his head shaved, scars on his neck and skull and other parts of his body. And his memory gone. All of this, especially the loss of memory, has an eerie echo of someone who has undergone electroconvulsive therapy (ECT).

Does this hint that Peter’s parallel world has been created to serve as an elaborate shield in order for him to deal with his need to submit to such treatment? Are we dealing with a case of serious mental imbalance? Or, expressed in less politically correct terms, is it quite possible a large portion or even all of Peter’s story is the concoction of a madman? Perhaps, in this case, being a madman is more of an asset than a liability. Recall the sign at the entrance to the magic theater from Hermann Hesse's novel Steppenwolf: FOR MADMEN ONLY. Questions to consider as you take a literary Christopher Priest-style magic carpet ride reading The Affirmation.


Lead singer in a rock group? Photo taken back in the early 1970s when author Christopher Priest was in the same age range as Peter Sinclair, protagonist of The Affirmation.

[Bradley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh, now, this is a rare gem! :)

The blurb does NOT do it justice. Rather, try to follow me here, because this could get rather twisty, but what we've got is what seems to be a rather self-absorbed man trying to come to terms with personal tragedy, writing a manuscript that is all about learning who he is and getting over a girl, but it soon becomes an adventuresome trip through a bunch of very interesting islands, him having won the gift of immortality through a lottery ticket.

The world-building is all kinds of wonderful and there's very little big action in the novel beause it's fully content to remain introspective, thoughtful, and exploratory. We have two women that feature prominently. One is in the past and the other is one he discovered on his trip through the islands on the way to the clinic that would give him his won immortality.

So far, so good.

However, this is where memory and reality start getting wonky. He discovers that the place he wrote of in his manuscript is all a lie, a fake, but it's our modern London. The islands are "real" in every sense of the word and the new girl and the clinic are getting increasingly frustrated with him, but to make things even worse, this "immortality" treatment makes you forget everything and you have to work your way back.

So should he trust the manuscript or the people who are nursing him back to health?

Delicious storytelling. And it only gets much, much worse, speeding up the reveals in a way that's worthy for any fan of Philip K Dick OR very deep pyschological thrillers, reality benders, SF-element traditional fictions, or any wonderful texts that explore the nature of madness from within the mind of the insane.

Of course, this book is even more beautiful because there's NO definitive answer. Is this or that real? Is anything? Is he mad? Is the world he dreamed up (ours, btw,) fake?

Totally awesome.

This kind of read always gets my mind pumping, and even though the text itself is always as clear as glass, Christopher Priest manages to pull off one of the twistiest tales I've ever read. So good! :)

This is the third book I've read of his, from The Inverted World to The Prestige, and this one might be my favorite for it's equal portions of clarity and confouding reveals. In it's own way I think it's superior to The Prestige, even though I loved that one a LOT.

I don't know. Perhaps I just love reality/memory bendy stuff more than anything else. :)

Totally awesome. :)

[Wastrel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not recommended for: people who like their books to be straightforward, easily understandable, and conventional. Also people who want their books to include Exciting Things Happening.

Special Interests covered: mental illness, philosophy.

--

A plain description of the novel would make it sound like a firework display of postmodern literary exuberance; but in fact it is anything but. It's a surprisingly low-key work, in its prose (quite quotidian), pacing (very measured), and mood (ruminating). It doesn't assault the reader with its brilliance; what it DOES do is crawl under your skin and refuse to leave. I found myself increasingly gripped, even though there was nothing much going on. In some ways, it has a bit of the sensibility of an old horror film, although there's not much actual horror. Or maybe there is, but it's genuine horror and dread, not the sort that is just code for monsters and serial killers. I suppose you could call it a novel of "psychological suspense". It's also exceptionally clever.

This may not be the best place to get into Priest - try "The Prestige" instead - and I can see how this might be very much a love-it-or-hate-it book. I think I may actually both love AND hate it. But if you like serious literary fiction, and are willing to take novels with fantasy elements seriously, it's a must-read; likewise, if you're a genre reader who's also willing to give themselves a headache now and then, this is considerably easier to get through than, say, Gene Wolfe. In fact, it's very easy to read, because it's written very simply and honestly. The difficulty comes after you've read it, when you're trying to decide what you feel about it.

It's not a perfect book - it's a little too emotionally cold, and a little too slow, particularly at the start - but it's powerful, memorable, highly intellectual, and brilliantly constructed.

If you want a longer review, which goes more deeply into my feelings about it and its strengths and weaknesses, here's the review I put on my blog when I read it: full review.

[Fiona · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I finished the last page of this book, I threw it across the room. I thought people only did that in anecdotes. Ironically enough, this book has turned me into a moderately implausible anecdote.

You should read it. Read all his things. CP is my hero.

(P.S., the blurb is terrible. I assure you, this is not a book about a sad writer boy whose girlfriend left him. Everyone here is better than that.)

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not sure what I just read but I am sure of two things: I loved it, and I will re-read it. I will read it again not just because I loved it, but because I want to understand it better, and want to pick it apart, and put it back together even though I'm not confident that it can be done.

I was captivated at first with some fairly mundane parallels to my life, an easy attraction to an everyday protagonist that just happens to share some of my mannerisms, feelings, thought processes.

Then around page 30 I hit a passage that made me question what I'd just read, and made me want to go re-read everything that had been written up to that point. I didn't, though; I chose to go on forward. I was greeted by a spiraling, harrowing descent that I do not wish to describe further for fear of ruining it for anyone that reads this review.

For a somewhat neurotic and certainly introspective reader like me it was like some kind of a drug, and simultaneously a cautionary tale against it.

Surreal and thrilling. I enjoyed every page. Priest does a remarkable job of writing with a clarity and succinctness that I envy.

[Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

Now that I've read everything by Nina Allan (to date), I've decided it's about time I started reading more work by her partner, Christopher Priest. I have no idea whether The Affirmation is a good place to start, but it certainly feels like it. This is an eerie novel which flips seamlessly between real and imagined worlds (but which is which?) while constructing a clever, intricate web of details around a doubled central character.

29-year-old Peter Sinclair has recently been through great personal upheaval, involving the death of his father, a tempestuous breakup, and the loss of his job and, subsequently, his flat. Therefore he has no qualms about moving out of London and into a dilapidated cottage belonging to a friend of his father's. The idea is that he will temporarily live there and, in lieu of rent, decorate the place. However, once there, he becomes obsessed with a different task: writing down the story of his life. At first he tries to write a straightforward memoir, but this doesn't help him make sense of anything. Eventually, he realises there is only one way to approach it: 'the deeper truth could only be told by falsehood'.

In this manuscript, the second Peter lives in a place he has invented – Jethra, a city in Faiandland. (These locations are part of the Dream Archipelago, which appears in a number of Priest's novels.) He has won an unusual lottery: the prize is immortality, conveyed by means of a treatment known as athanasia, which he must now travel to the island of Collago to receive. This all makes a kind of sense until we discover Jethra-Peter is also writing a fictionalised account of his life – in which he has invented a city called London and which describes, in every detail, all that we know of original-Peter's life. Not only that, but this manuscript is crucial to the athanasia process.

The Affirmation is written in a style I would describe as smooth. At first, it is deceptively mundane. But, even before the Jethra narrative enters the frame, there is also something quite unnerving about it. The first few chapters in particular reminded me of Frederick in John Fowles' The Collector, except that we are never allowed outside Peter's narrow, twisted viewpoint. The one exception to that is an intervention from original-Peter's sister Felicity; through her words, we realise his perception bears very little resemblance to the truth. The cottage is a dump, and what Peter has told us about his ex-girlfriend Gracia is a pack of lies. However, this small window on reality is soon swallowed up by Peter's imagined lives.

The reader, then, is doubly unsure who or what to believe, and this only becomes more difficult as the two narratives bleed into each other more and more. If it was possible for a book to make me feel physically dizzy, this one would. The two Peters are like the two sides – or one side? – of a Möbius strip, and each explains the other, so (arguably, anyway) you can't believe one is invented without believing the other one is too. (A comment on fiction in itself, maybe. If The Affirmation was published today, it would surely be considered a playful take on the 'literary vs. science fiction' debate.) It's a strange experiment that actually comes off. And what makes it work is that it is also just a really good, really enjoyable story.

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[Alexander Carmele · Rating 2 out of 5]

Neurotisches Puzzle über einen langweiligen Menschen.

Inhalt: 1/5 Sterne (Jammerlappen-Story)
Form: 2/5 Sterne (unauffällige Sprache)
Erzählstimme: 3/5 Sterne (konsequent, aber unzuverlässig)
Komposition: 1/5 Sterne (neurotisches Puzzle)
Leseerlebnis: 2/5 Sterne (guter kurzer Anfang, schlimmes Ende)

Anlässlich von Wolf Hass‘ Wackelkontakt hat mich die Recherche auf einen Science-Fiction-Klassiker namens Der weiße Raum, im Original: The Affirmation , von Christopher Priest gebracht. Wie in Wackelkontakt liest eine Figur über sich selbst und eine Realitätsspaltung findet statt. Im Gegensatz aber zu Wackelkontakt streut Priest noch wagemutige Spekulationen ein, die sogenannte Athanasie:

Die Lotterie war etwas, das für andere Leute existierte. Ich war die falsche Person für diesen Gewinn, er war nicht für mich. Die Collago-Lotterie vergab die Athanasiebehandlung als ihren Hauptgewinn: echte Unsterblichkeit, medizinisch garantiert. […] Früher hatte ich bisweilen die ironische Bemerkung gemacht, daß, wenn ewiges Leben eineinhalb Jahrhunderte Beschäftigung mit Kreuzworträtseln bedeutete, ich es zufrieden sei, an natürlichen Ursachen zu sterben.

Peter Sinclair, zu Beginn von Der weiße Raum 29 Jahre alt, im Jahr 1976. Er verliert so ziemlich alles auf einen Schlag, seinen Vater, der stirbt, seinen Job wegen der Rezession, seine Wohnung wegen eines Eigentümerwechsels und dann noch die Beziehung mit Gracia, die er eigentlich über alles liebt. All dies zusammen bringt ihn an die Grenze des Belastbaren und darüber hinaus. Er muss sich und sein ganzes Leben in Frage stellen. Er beginnt, abgeschieden im Landhaus eines Freundes von der Familie, zu schreiben:

Während mein Manuskript an Umfang zunahm, trat ich in ein Stadium geistiger Ausbeutung ein. Ich schlief nachts nur noch fünf oder sechs Stunden, und wenn ich erwachte, führte mich mein erster Weg an den Arbeitstisch, wo ich überlas, was ich am Tag zuvor geschrieben hatte. Ich ordnete alles dem Schreiben unter, aß nur, wenn der Hunger mich dazu trieb, schlief nur, wenn ich erschöpft war. Alles andere wurde vernachlässigt; die Renovierungsarbeiten für Edwin und Marge wurden auf unbestimmte Zeit vertagt.

Peter schreibt so besessen, obsessiv-verstrickt immersiv, dass auch im Erzähltext selbst seine Realität nach und nach das dünne Gewebe der Konsistenz zu verlieren beginnt. Interessanterweise schafft das erste Sechstel einen Sog, der poetologisch-überzeugend, psychologisch-austariert diesen Zusammenbruch nachvollzieht, bis zum kompositorisch Höhepunkt: die Ankunft seiner Schwester Felicity, das Freudianische Realitätsprinzip schlechthin:

Felicity war bis in die Mitte des Zimmers gekommen und stand neben mir. »Ich mußte kommen, Peter. Am Telefon hörtest du dich so seltsam an, und James und ich, wir hatten beide das Gefühl, daß etwas nicht stimmte. Als du die Briefe nicht beantwortetest, rief ich Edwin an. Was tust du eigentlich?«
»Was willst du von mir, Felicity?«
»Ich machte mir Sorgen um dich. Und es war nicht unbegründet, wie ich sehe! Allein der Zustand dieses Zimmers! Machst du überhaupt nicht sauber?«

Was kompositorisch außergewöhnlich gut von Christopher Priest in Der weiße Raum angelegt ist, und zwar im ersten Sechstel, verliert sich schnell und entpuppt sich als heiße Luft. Die Erzählinstanz verzettelt sich im wahrsten Sinne des Wortes. Das Manuskript bleibt ungeschrieben, die Ebenen mischen sich, die Situation wird von Seite zu Seite langweiliger, beliebiger, öder. Die Metapher der Unsterblichkeit (durch das Veröffentlichen eines Buches), durch die Beschreibung und Fixierung von Real-Existierenden zu Buchstaben, misslingt durchaus dort, wo es am Ende doch nur darum geht, dass der Protagonist Gracia nicht heiß genug findet, sich nicht um sie kümmern will, sondern lieber selbst bemuttert werden möchte. Als Plot leider viel viel viel zu dünn, obwohl die Mischung der Realitätsebenen ungewöhnlich gut angelegt worden ist. Schade.

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Details – ab hier Spoilergefahr (zur Erinnerung für mich):
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Inhalt: ●Protagonist: Peter Sinclair (PS), über 29 Jahre alt. Nebenfiguren: PS Gefährtin, Gracia (eine Welt) - Seri Fulten (andere Welt); PS Schwester Felicity, 31 Jahre alt, (in der einen Welt) – Kalia (in der anderen).
●Zusammenfassung/Inhaltsangabe:
Kapitel 1-4: Peters Vater stirbt, wenig später verliert er seinen Arbeitsplatz, dann wird ihm die Wohnung gekündigt und seine Beziehung mit Gracia geht in die Brüche. Als Krisenbewältigungsstrategie kümmert er sich das Landhaus von einem Freund der Familie, Edwin Miller. Statt aber das Haus zu renovieren, verliert sich PS ins Trinken und Schreiben und verfertigt eine Autobiographie, bevor er diese jedoch beenden kann, stört ihn seine Schwester, die sich um ihn in Sheffield kümmern will. –
Kapitel 5-9: Plötzlich ist der Ich-Erzähler auf einem Schiff. Er hat in der Collagoe-Lotterie gewonnen, nämlich das ewige Leben, und muss deshalb von Jethra, seiner Heimatstadt, nach Muriseay reisen. Auf dem Weg lernt er Matilde kennen, die ihn aber abblitzen lässt. In Muriseay, im Lotteriebüro, lernt er Seri Fulten kennen, die ihn schließlich, überdrüssig von ihrem Job im Lotteriebüro, nach Collago begleitet. Peter befindet sich noch immer im Zweifel, ob er die Operation an sich durchführen möchte, die ihm ewiges Leben (oder krebsfreies, altersfreies Leben) verspricht, denn diese würde ihn sein Gedächtnis kosten.
Kapitel 10-11: In Sheffield erholt sich PS. Sie renovieren auch das Landhaus. Felicity fädelt ein Wiedersehen mit Gracia an. Sie hatte eine Affäre mit einem Steve, aber sie versöhnen sich wieder und beschließen zusammenzuziehen.
Kapitel 12-15: Auf dem Weg zur Klinik, auf einem Schiff namens Mulligayn. Nach seiner Ankunft, Gespräche in der Klinik. Nach einem medizinischen Untersuchung stellt sich heraus, dass Peter an einen Aneurysma leidet. Er entscheidet sich für die Operation, die ihm das Leben nicht nur verlängert, sondern rettet. Aufgrund seiner (auch in der Parallelwelt geschriebenen Autobiographie) wird die Vorbereitungszeit verkürzt. Laren Dobey, seine Therapeutin, und Seri stehen ihm bei, wollen ihm aber das Manuskript mit seinen Erinnerungen erst zum Lesen geben, wenn er etwas stabiler, mnemotisch und psychisch, geworden ist. Eine Entfremdung zwischen PS und Seri findet statt. Seri erzählt ihm von seinem Manuskript, in diesem wird von Felicity, Gracia gesprochen.
Kapitel 16-17: In London, Gracia, die nach ihrem vorherigen Selbstmordversuch eine Therapeutin namens Jane hat, und PS, immer noch arbeitslos, streiten sich wieder. PS tagträumt, während Gracia arbeitet, von Seri, die seine sexuelle Phantasie darstellt, der Gracia nicht entspricht. Er debattiert mit Seri, macht eine Tagestour, als er in die Wohnung zurückkommt, hat Gracia einen Selbstmordversuch begangen. Er sieht, dass Gracia in seinem Roman gelesen hat. Er ruft den Notarzt.
Kapitel 18-20: Langsam gewinnt er auf Collago sein Gedächtnis zurück. Als er das erste Mal zugibt, etwas vergessen zu haben, wird er als fast geheilt eingestuft und darf sich auch außerhalb der Klinik freibewegen. Es wird ihm die Einsicht in sein Manuskript gewährt. Er darf es lesen. Besessen von seinen Erinnerungen, verwirft er die Pläne, die Seri für sie beide im Sinne gehabt hat. Er verschwindet heimlich nachts.
Kapitel 21: London. Gracias Selbstmordversuch nimmt ihn mit. Er tagträumt weiterhin von Seri. Er verfolgt sie, während sie aus London herausfährt. Sie finden am Strand zusammen. Sie machen eine Inseltour. Seri will ihn davon abbringen, zurück zu Gracia zu gehen. Sie kehren nach London zurück. Seri ungehalten.
Kapitel 22: PS kehrt zurück. Gracia redet mit Jean, ihrer Therapeutin. Gracia ungehalten. PS will mit ihr über das Manuskript reden, alles klarstellen, aber Gracia sagt, dass sie nicht im Manuskript gelesen habe. Es gäbe keines. Die Seiten seien leer. Sie geht zurück zu Steve, lässt Peter alleine in der Wohnung. Mehr als ein Jahr seit seinem Aufenthalt im Landhaus sind vergangen. Dieses Jahr ist noch nicht im Manuskript enthalten. Er gibt Seri recht, dass er sich weiter seiner Selbstbeforschung widmen muss.
Kapitel 23-24: Collago. Er reist zurück nach Jethra, Richtung Norden. Auf Seevra, dem letzten Stop vor Jethra, trifft er Seri wieder. Sie will ihn davon abbringen, nach Gracia zu suchen. Er sei nun Athanasier (nach seiner Operation). Sie sind wieder in London, und in London verliert er Seri aus dem Blick.
Inhaltsangabe/Zusammenfassung (kurz): Durch eine Reihe von Unglücken gerät Peter Sinclair in eine Lebenskrise, die ihn traumatisiert, sodass er eine Phantasiewelt erzeugt, in der Menschen von lebensbedrohlichen Krankheiten geheilt werden (wie sein Vater) und sich alle Welt um ihn sorgt und ihn aufpäppelt, indes geht die Erzählzeit weiter und alle Versuche, seiner Schwester und seiner Lebensgefährtin scheitern, ihn von seiner Phantasie zu befreien.
… eine Art physisch-psychische Lebenszusammenbruch, nachgezeichnet eines sehr uninteressanten, sehr wenig elaborierten Menschen, also ein wenig Houellebecq, ein wenig Strunk, ziemlich glatt gebürsteter Akademiker, der eigentlich nur Sex will, umsorgt werden möchte, dessen Krise dadurch in Gang gerät, dass sein Vater stirbt, er allein steht. Er beginnt zu trinken und zu schreiben und verliert sich in seinen Schreib- und Selbstbetäubungsversuchen, bis er nicht mehr zwischen Realität und Phantasie unterscheiden kann. Als Thema sehr enervierend aufgearbeitet, aber zäh, inhaltlich langweilig geschrieben, ohne Ereignis, ohne Schreibgrund, ohne rote Linie, eine detaillierte Lebensbeschreibung eines sehr ereignislosen Lebens. Ein wenig wie „Echtzeitalter“ von Tonio Schachinger. --> 1 Stern

Form: Sprache einigermaßen flüssig, einigermaßen einfallsreiche Eigennamen, professionell, stereotypisch, Genresprache. Sprache als reines Vehikel, aber nicht unangenehm, keine zu krassen Wiederholungen, keine falsche Konjunktionen, Konstruktionen, Bemühen um gewundene, eingängige Sätze. --> 2 Sterne

Erzählstimme: Ich-Erzählinstanz, unsituiert, zwischen zwei Welten, die ineinander übergehen. Ziemlich unklar, wo welche Welt beginnt, wo welche Welt aufhört, aber Reflexion, selbstkritisch, hierdurch anfänglich sehr überzeugend, und auch glaubwürdig. Als Erzählinstanz und zusammenbrechendes Ich symptomatisch durchexerziert. Aber eben: unsituiert, und daher auch unzuverlässig. --> 3 Sterne

Komposition: Durch die Ereignislosigkeit, gibt es keine inhaltliche Substanz, die formale Erzählweise bricht auseinander. Ein etwas undurchsichtiges, neurotisches Puzzle. --> 1 Stern

Leseerlebnis: Anfänglich sehr mitreißend, die Krise, sehr überzeugend, der Rückzugsort, der Versuch, sich wieder einzufangen, nachdem alles in die Brüche gegangen ist. Dann das Auftauchen der Schwester, Riss in der Realität. Sehr gelungen, nun plötzlich, wovon läuft die Figur eigentlich weg? Ab diesem Zeitpunkt (erstes Sechstel), statt eine Substanz einzulösen, flieht die Erzählung in die Phantasiewelt, ziehende, ätzend lange Beschreibung, die nicht überzeugen, die langweilen, völlig neue Figuren … Zerstörung des Buches und des Lesegenusses. Nur noch anstrengend. --> 1 Stern

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Affirmation starts out as a manic* exploration of the possible existence of truth in fiction and how the writing and rewriting of autobiography in increasingly veiled and distanced terms reaches a vanishing point where it suddenly becomes 'fiction' and all the attendant consequences therein: people, places, and events from 'reality' not merely transposed—but transformed—yet retaining the shimmer of familiarity. It explodes* from there into a mad* identity quest mapped out through a ragged manuscript, a memory-mining expedition, and a split-level view of relationships and travel with the destination an archipelago comprised of seemingly endless numbers of islands stretching out toward the horizon. A fundamental struggle occurs over what is real and what is imagined:

It scared me to know there was this dichotomy in the perceived world, as if to stop believing it could cause the ship to vanish beneath me.

And what of those islands...

To her, each island represented a different facet of her personality, each one vested in her a sense of identity. She was incomplete without islands, she was spread across the sea.

*While Priest's prose is measured—some may even say restrained—the pacing and depth of the story fully earn these terms.

[Aniket · Rating 5 out of 5]

Introduction

The Affirmation by Christopher Priest is one of the greatest books I've ever read. I read this book a couple of days ago but hadn't been able to write a review because I was unable to think straight. This book has seriously messed with my mind.

I have never been a huge fan of simple and straightforward plots. Most of my favourite movies are filled with twisted, complicated plotlines and confusing narratives but it's a bit easier to create such effects on screen where you have a variety of tools available. But to do that using written words is a much more difficult task but Christopher Priest does this exceptionally and the result is nothing short of mind-bending.

The following quote captures the essence of this extraordinary book better than anything else ever could -

"From things that have happened and from things as they exist and from all things that you know and all those you cannot know, you make something through your invention that is not a representation but a whole new thing truer than anything true and alive, and you make it alive, and if you make it well enough, you give it immortality."
- Ernest Hemingway

If you've read this book you'd truly understand and appreciate how apt this quote is for this particular book.

Plot

The story is told in first person and in the very early parts of the book, Peter Sinclair establishes himself as a somewhat unreliable narrator. Whether this is because of two (or three?) worlds colliding and merging into each other or because of the state of his mind is unclear.

The story begins with Peter telling us that "Already there is an uncertainty, and my sureness recedes." And he's not lying.
Peter is twenty-nine years old (or is he?) and has recently lost his father, his job, his apartment and his girlfriend (they broke up). All this happen in a matter of weeks, crushing and destroying him.

Most people experience these unfortunate events in their lives but to go through them all at the same time must truly be devastating.

In his intentions of finding himself and finding some meaning to his life, he decides to write an autobiography which only leads to more uncertainty and confusion. The narration is somewhat flat but that only helps the book in later parts. The prose is written in a way that you believe what is being said and this makes it even more baffling when things are questioned or disproved.

Characters

The characters are extremely well created and realistic. Even the characters who might or might not be real are as well rounded as the other ones.

The best part about the characters is probably the fact that every character has a personality which makes them unique as they express different emotions and exhibit different sides of themselves.
But the narrator is not without bias towards the characters and that bias usually draws you in as the biases become your own.
Before you know, it's not only Peter who distrusts the other characters, it's you who distrust them. This doesn't stop the characters from coming across to you, making you believe things and question them at the same time.

World

This is probably the most complex part of the book. There are more than a singular world and both of them appear to be equally real. But are they? We might never truly know. There is an alternate reality set inside the reality we know to be true.

One of the worlds is the world with which we're quite familiar - London.
The other world is a fascinating, dream-like world aptly named as Dream Archipelago, a seemingly endless number of islands, full of endless possibilities.

Both of these worlds are described in flat, matter-of-fact manner, making you believe in both of them and the yet reader ends up questioning the existence of both of them.

Conclusion and Questions

Some sci-fi novels are filled with aliens, high-tech weapons, time travel and such. The Affirmation, however, deals with much grandeur things. It poses questions about (but not limited to) the reliability of one's memory, the meaning of life, and the morality of immortality.

What about Immortality?

Would you want to be immortal if you could, knowing that everyone you love will die and you will be forever alone? Is there any meaning to such a life? Do you deserve to be immortal? Would you do something worthwhile with your never-ending life or would it be just a waste?

Let's talk about something a lot more personal. Something that you always rely on and consider the utmost truth - Memory

Can you really trust your memory? Can you trust anything?

How reliable is your own memory? Do you remember the things which happened in your childhood? We always seem so sure about the things we witnessed or experienced when we were children. We never question them, do we? And yet there are moments when you're talking to your parents or elders and they give you a somewhat different account of the events. Does that mean that you made things up? Our memories are a part of us. They are what shapes us and define us. But it's also true that the memories depend on your perception of the events and your senses which might be affected by a number of reasons.

If the things you remember from your childhood are flawed, what's to say that everything else isn't? What's to say that everything else you remember is correct? How do you even know who you really are?

These are only a few of the questions this remarkable book made me ask and to say that I can never see my life in the same way will be a massive understatement.

Nothing is certain. Half your life could be a figment of your imagination for all you know. Memory is unreliable and so are the people you remember.

While writing this entire review, I couldn't help but think of Solipsism.

Solipsism is the philosophical idea that only one's own mind is sure to exist. It proposes that the knowledge of anything outside one's own mind is unsure; the external world and other minds cannot be known and might not exist outside the mind.

But what of your own mind? Is the knowledge we have of our own lives reliable? Can it be trusted?

TL;DR : The Affirmation by Christopher Priest is one of the greatest things I've ever experienced. It's fascinating, mind-bending and twisted. By the time you finish reading it, you'll be looking at everything differently. I highly recommend it to everyone who likes to think and question things.

Note: This book is not for people who like their books to be simple. Despite not being long, this won't be a quick read because the ideas are simply too big.

Thank you for reading!

[Ben Loory · Rating 3 out of 5]

of all the writers i don't like, christopher priest is probably my favorite. i first found him through his book The Inverted World, which was on david pringle's top 100 sci-fi books of all time list (and has since been re-released by nyrb books, one of their only sf titles). that was a dazzlingly smart book about a warped world where civilization was driven around on rails to stay at the center of a kind of gravity well or something, i don't know, told in a kind of detached, reticent manner that didn't seem to really add up to a lot. then i read The Glamour, which was pretty much the same, except about an amnesia victim and an underground network of invisible people, and now this book, about a grief-stricken man who starts writing an autobiography which mutates into a novel and then suddenly he wins a ticket in a lottery where the prize is immortality and has to go off to "the islands" to have the procedure done...

this is a guy with a lot of ideas. a lot of really cool ideas! but they don't ever really seem to pay off.

he also wrote the book The Prestige, which was turned into the movie of the same name, wherein david bowie played nicola tesla and scarlett johansson, um, appeared. i haven't read that one yet. though i probably will, and not not really like it all that much.

he reminds me a lot of Peter Ackroyd. extremely intelligent, well-read, possessed of vast imaginative capabilities, but cold and removed in a british kind of way. no sense of humor, not much for people. and not interested in resolving his stories. still, though... there's something there that just keeps me coming back.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love crazy ambiguous puzzling books, and this is definitely one of them. By the time I was 75% through, I was racing to the end to see how all the pieces fell into place. However, my thought as I read the last sentence was "huh?" rather than "ah ha!". That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it just means that I have to do a bit more thinking after closing the last page. Read some other reviews and talk to other people who have read this book. The first 3/4 of the book was 4 stars, but by the end I felt it was in the 3 star range. So, I'll split the difference and go with 3.5 for the time being. I'm giving it a straight 4 stars after talking about it a bit.

This is the first book in Christopher Priest's loose series of books called Dream Archipelago, so it's interesting to see where that term originates within this series of books and I'm curious how the next book will be set up.

[Jamie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A brilliant, elegantly written, deeply introspective inside view of a full on schizophrenic psychotic break. As others have noted, this is really a psychological thriller more than sci-fi as such.

Priest takes the notion of the unreliable narrator to new extremes, leaving one confused and a bit crazy as the protagonist's worlds bleed into each other, sometimes subtly, sometimes jarringly. He methodically tears apart and reconstructs the notion of memory as identity, i.e. "I am what I remember". It's not nearly as gloomy or disturbing as it could have been, feeling more like an odyssey of the mind, an exploration of self and reality.

[Hanan Buhadana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh. My. God.
This was the weirdest, most surreal reading experience I have ever had.
This novel was written just for me. I know it. Don't try to tell me otherwise.
And reading it, I felt I was reading myself and I had to get to the ending of the book to find out the ending of my own story, but at the same time I was so fearful, because do I really want to know the ending of my story? Will reading it change the middle of my story? or will it erase everything that came before so I can write the new version on that blank white page?
I'm so lost. And never felt happier to be lost.

[Berna Labourdette · Rating 5 out of 5]

Otra de mis novelas favoritas que recomiendo a todo el mundo. En esta novela de ciencia ficción un hombre decide escribir un diario, pero cambiando los nombres de sus conocidos y del lugar donde vive para evitar problemas. De pronto descubre que está escribiendo un diario de vida porque se sometió a un tratamiento para ser inmortal, pero que implicó perder la memoria. En este cruce de fantasía y realidad, nunca estamos seguros de quién escribe el diario hasta el final. Priest escribe excelente, como siempre.

Este libro, uno de mis favoritos, sobre recuerdos, realidad y el proceso terapéutico de la escritura:

“Las metáforas tenían vida, y en ellas estaba definida mi identidad”

“De ciertas cosas al menos estoy seguro.
Me llamo Peter Sinclair, soy inglés y tengo, o tenía, veintinueve años. Ya aquí hay una incertidumbre, y mi seguridad vacila. La edad es una variable: ya no tengo veintinueve años”

Conocí a Christopher Priest, gracias, una vez más, a la editorial Minotauro de Porrúa y se transformó en uno de mis autores favoritos. Quizás no es tan conocido en español, pero en los últimos años gracias a películas como “El gran truco” basada en su libro El Prestigio, quizás un poco más. Tiene libros excelentes como Un verano infinito (colección de cuentos), El Glamour (una novela de terror sicológico muy inquietante) y Un mundo invertido (donde volvemos a la ciencia ficción, con una ciudad que se mueve), entre otros.

Esta novela está estructurada de manera muy sencilla, pero a medida que nos vamos adentrando en la historia vamos descubriendo y sospechando cosas. En la primera parte, leemos cómo Peter Sinclair, nuestro protagonista, intenta escribir un diario de vida para poner algo de orden en la situación en la que se encuentra. Mucho de lo que describe al comienzo es una depresión clínica y es imposible dejar de pensar que el escribir sobre eso formó parte de un proceso terapéutico del cual somos parte también al leer. Esta parte se ha usado como ejemplo para describir el proceso de escritura, con todas las dificultades que implica. Así, lo vemos atravesar distintas experiencias vitales: el desamor y la posibilidad de enamorarse nuevamente, la búsqueda de su identidad, el trabajo creativo, el recontruirse desde un fracaso laboral, pero a medida que avanza la historia nos damos cuenta que Peter escribe sobre un lugar “imaginario”: El Archipiélago del Sueño, donde existe una lotería que otorga la posibilidad de someterse a un tratamiento (Atanasia) que permite borrar tus recuerdos, pero te hace inmortal. Peter gana esta lotería y se somete al procedimiento, pero tiene en sus manos el diario de sus recuerdos que habla de su vida en Londres, no en el Archipiélago.

La publicidad de la lotería de la Atanasia se plantea como algo permanente e invasivo durante toda la novela (acá es imposible no hacer el paralelo con la publicidad eterna de la “lotería de los proles” en “1984”). Las dos funcionan como una esperanza, un cambio de vida que se ve monótona y muy dura. Acá Peter (como Peter Pan) queda “fijado” en la edad (por eso la insistencia al comenzar el diario en decir que tiene 29 años), no envejecerá más gracias al procedimiento, pero esta decisión también lo aisla de todo contacto humano, ya que las demás personas que conoce, envejecerán y morirán. Aquí vemos la importancia de los recuerdos en construirnos como personas. Si el proceso te hace inmortal pero obliga a que borres tus recuerdos, ¿sigues siendo la misma persona? ¿Porqué alguien querría borrar todos sus recuerdos? (por eso puedo imaginar que Peter escribe su diario viviendo un intenso duelo).

Hay muchas explicaciones para la situación de Peter en la novela, pero no podemos olvidar que estamos leyendo la descripción de una realidad cuando el narrador principal no es fiable, pues describe una cosa y luego descubrimos por los otros personajes de la novela que esta realidad podría ser distinta. La insistencia en el color blanco, hace a muchos pensar que Peter está en un hospital (incluso en un hospital siquiátrico por el shock que ha tenido) y quizás resulta interesante pensar que toda la fantasía del archipiélago del Sueño y de la atanasia ha sido una forma de lidiar con el trauma y la pena y es una manera que tiene el cerebro de recuperarse a sí mismo. De esta forma, no podemos dar una realidad por cierta y la otra por falsa, porque ambas en cierta medida, son reflejos de la persona que es Peter (que está en permanente construción, como una identidad que no es fija y que siempre evoluciona).

Ya mencionamos que podemos leer la novela como la metáfora de un duelo. Ya sea por el amor perdido, por la infancia (el paso desde la juventud a la madurez) y por la persona que era Peter antes de comenzar su viaje (y perder la memoria) en el Archipiélago del Sueño. Me gusta que Priest haga la diferencia no sólo entre la realidad y ficción, sino también entre sueño y vigilia. Otro de los ejes en los que se mueve la novela, es entre el campo (adonde llega Peter a curarse) y la ciudad (que abandona porque le resulta agobiante). También entre realidad y realidad virtual: podemos imaginarnos el diario de vida que lleva Peter como un alter ego como los que construimos en instagram o facebook, una vida distinta a la que llevamos, la vida que quizás querríamos llevar y que será una “vida” que quedará cuando muramos, un poco lo que le pasa a Peter cuando se somete a la atanasia.

De esta manera, la estructura de la novela nos recuerda a “La noche boca arriba” de Cortázar y a todas las estructuras narrativas que están recreadas a partir de la famosa historia taoísta: “Chuang Tzu soñó que era una mariposa. Al despertar ignoraba si era Tzu que había soñado que era una mariposa o si era una mariposa y estaba soñando que era Tzu”. La cita Borges en su “Antología de la literatura fantástica” y podemos pensar que también es una inspiración para otro cuento estupendo de Cortázar: “Continuidad de los parques”.

Una solución es pensar que ambos mundos puedan coexistir porque Peter los recuerda a ambos y en cierta medida enlaza el paso de la niñez/juventud a la adultez (que puedo citar en obras como “Un puente hacia Terabithia“), sin que significa dejar la fantasía atrás. Cual obra de MC Escher podemos apreciar una escena (en este caso la vida de Peter) de dos maneras distintas y ninguna de esas dos es la “verdadera”. Peter, a través de la escritura y sus recuerdos toma conciencia que en el proceso de construir su identidad lo que decide ser es lo que prima. Es una afirmación, es decir sí a la vida (podemos entenderlo así como alguien que logra recuperarse de una gran depresión o un gran trauma, que vuelve a la vida: “Veía la atanasia como una negación de la vida, cuando en realidad era una afirmación”).

Cada vez que leo el libro elijo una de las vidas de Peter, en Londres o en el Archipíelago del Sueño. A veces pienso que el proceso para ser inmortal (producto de ganar la lotería), es una forma muy complicada de procesar la culpa y la pena, donde se crea toda esta historia del Archipiélago para no recordar, al menos la vida que más le duele. Otras veces pienso en la solución más evidente: Peter está loco y describe delirios, confundiendo la realidad con el mundo de fantasía que imaginó. Y otras veces, pienso que Peter no se llama Peter y está escribiendo sobre una ciudad misteriosa llamada Londres 🙂

[David Hebblethwaite · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having lost his father, job, home, and relationship, all in quick succession, Peter Sinclair is at his lowest ebb. He takes on some work helping to renovate a friend’s country cottage; inspired by his ability to turn his vision for one of the room’s into reality, Peter resolves to write his autobiography, in the hope that, by doing so, he can make some sense of his life. After trying various approaches, he decides that the best way to achieve what he wants is to write metaphorically about his life; it won’t be what ‘actually’ happened, but it will attain (what Peter sees as) the ‘higher truth’ of capturing what the events of his twenty-nine years meant to him.

So, Peter creates an alternative version of himself, with the same name, but living in an imaginary world, and all the key people in his life given different names – and writes this Peter’s life story to represent the ‘higher truth’ of his won. Peter has almost completed the manuscript when he is interrupted by the arrival of his estranged sister, Felicity, and is forced to break off his work mid-sentence.

All this happens in the first four chapters of The Affirmation; the fifth is again narrated by Peter Sinclair (his voice is recognisably the same), but it’s the Peter of the imaginary world (a world, incidentally, also used by Priest as the setting for his ‘Dream Archipelago’ stories), who is sailing south to a clinic, having won a lottery to undergo a medical procedure which will effectively confer immortality on him. Okay, one supposes, this must be an extract from the ‘real’ Peter’s manuscript – but, no: the Peter in this world has also written a fictionalised autobiography; and the events of this strand subtly contradict what we know of the other Peter’s manuscript. One is left with no option but to conclude that the ‘imaginary’ world has its own valid reality.

And so, as the novel continues, the two realities shift back and forth, with the reader never allowed to pin down one of them as being more real than the other. Even the nature of the text presented to us is uncertain: we never knowingly get to read any of the manuscripts referred to, so what exactly is the testimony that we’re reading? And we only know Peter Sinclair through his words on the page, so what can we trust? This is what Priest is so good at: undermining our expectations, hiding the truth, making the realities of his stories profoundly uncertain.

There are imaginative pleasures a-plenty in The Affirmation, then; but the novel also works on other levels. It’s a fine meditation on memory, and how it can make us who we are. Peter believes that memory is central to the creation of identity, but he also knows how fallible our memories can be; this is played out in several different ways in the novel, including a quite literal one in the shape of the athanasia treatment – a side effect of the procedure is to erase patients’ memories; they’re required to complete a questionnaire beforehand, which will be used to reconstruct their memories – but can they possibly be the same people afterwards?

The Affirmation is also an acute portrayal of a man in a fragile mental state (though, as noted, it resists being interpreted as solely a tale of delusion). We discover early on that Peter hasn’t actually painted his ‘white room’ at all (though he imagines it painted, and it’s that ‘higher truth’, he insists, that really matters); this is only one of the first indications that the world viewed through Peter’s eyes may not be what a third party would see. This leads the protagonist into difficulties relating to other people. For example, Peter’s ideas of what his girlfriends (in both worlds) are like don’t reflect the reality, which puts a strain on his relationships; the way Priest reveals the ramifications of this is simply superb.

I’ve read three of Chris Priest’s novels now, and they have all been excellent. Seriously, if you have yet to read him, you’re missing out. As for me, I doubt it will be long before I read another of his books, and I very much look forward to doing so.

[El · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of those books I picked up in clearance for no reason other than it was cheap and I knew the author's name because he wrote The Prestige which later become a Christopher Nolan movie (RIP David Bowie). And also this is one bad-ass cover with that face-stripey thing going on.

Not knowing anything about a story is actually one of my favorite things when I read, because I like not having any real expectations. The back of the book doesn't give a lot of information, though I found it appealing that the protag here, Peter Sinclair, sets out to write an autobiography after his life otherwise falls apart, but said autobiography winds up being sort of a fantasy version. What strikes me about that concept is that, really, aren't autobiographies just another form of fantasy? Priest delves into the idea of memory and self, two things I'm already sort of obsessed with in similar ways, so I appreciated that slant to the story.

And also unreliable narrators are the best.

As Sinclair's story unfolds, the reader isn't entirely sure which version is actually reality. Time sort of flips inside of itself, characters and places merge and separate, and there's still this underlying question as to what (and who) is actually real and what (and who) is just figments of Sinclair's imagination.

This is a short book, and while the beginning is sort of slow and meander-y, pretty soon I found myself wanting to know how it ends. I had difficulty connecting to all of the characters, not just because they are not redeemable characters, but just because I felt Priest kept them all at arm's length for some reason that didn't seem to work for the story. But that's strangely a minor complaint; otherwise I enjoyed this book quite a bit and I'm glad I read it without knowing anything about it.

"Memory is continuity too, a sense of identity and place and consequence. I am what I am because I can remember how I became it."

p144

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very engrossing book but it was also very confusing. And that is all I will say because I don't want to spoil something.

[Simon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book resists all efforts to define and pin it down. I would say that essentially this is a story of a man and his troubled relationship with the people around him, in particular his lover Glacia, and most importantly his self. But there are elements and themes that one might well find in SF or fantasy.

He attempts to define himself by writing down his past. But he is dissatisfied and rewrites it, each time becoming more abstract, more inventive until he constructs a fully imagined world but feels that it better encapsulates a deeper truth about his life. The book is split between two narratives both from the perspective of the protagonist Peter Sinclair, one set in the "real" world, the other in the "imagined" world and in each he has written his autobiographical manuscript but which is set in the other world.

An important theme in this book is the notion of identity and what makes us who we are. Do our memories define us? Give us the sense of continuity that allows us to go on thinking we are who we are? Would you be the same person if you had amnesia but you rebuilt your memories afterwards from an autobiography you had written?

My only criticism of this book is that some parts of the narrative felt belaboured. But that is only a very minor criticism really. A very good book and I look forward to reading more by this author.

[EDIT:] After re-reading this novel, I enjoyed it every bit as much as I did the first time, although I'm not sure I understand it any better.

This must be one of the greatest explorations of the theme of identity and memory that I have read. And also what struck me again this time is how pleasant and easy to engage with his prose style is. With the complex ideas the author is tackling here, that really helps.

Undeniably a masterpiece that I look forward to re-reading again in the future. I don't know if I'll ever tire of (re)joining Peter Sinclair in his attempts to define himself and the people around him.

[Sarah ~ · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Affirmation - Christopher Priest




بيتر سنكلير خسر كل شيء تقريبًا- والده وعمله وحبيبته ولم يتبق له إلا شقيقة بعيدة عنه، مسكونًا بالفجيعة والفشل يحاول كتابة سيرة ذاتية، ولكن سرعان ما تبدو السيرة سيرة رجل آخر تمامًا وفي عالم متخيل بالكامل، ومن تبدأ محاولاته -ومحاولاتنا معه، لفصل العالمين عن بعض.

رواية ذكية فلسفية ومدهشة… بحث عن الهوية الشخصية والذات بين المكتوب والذكريات وأوجه متعددة للحقيقة وسؤال ما هو الواقع تحديدًا يتردد كثيرًا، وطبعًا أسئلة عن الصحة النفسية.
ولا بد من الإشادة بتلك النهاية وذلك السطر الأخير …

خلال قراءة بعض حوارات الرواية تذكرت قصيدة وديع سعادة:

"دقوا على بابه وقالوا: نحمل لك شفاء مدى الحياة وأبدية أيضاً
لا تغلق الباب، دعنا ندخل ونعطيك الدواء.
ما كان يعرف أن شفاءه وخلوده موصولين بغرباء مارين في هذا الشارع.
ما كان يعرف أن شفاءه وخلوده رهن طرقة على الباب.
في بيتي موتى كثيرون، قال، ومرضى كثيرون.
هل يكفي دواؤكم كلّ هؤلاء؟ لم يغلق الباب، كانت في الحوض زهرة فنظر اليها وإلى ورقة يابسة، ينظرون إليه، وينظر، وينظر إلى الورقة والزهرة، يتكلمون والورقة والزهرة صامتتان.
لم يكن يسمع كلامًا بل صمتًا.
ثم أقفل الباب وعاد
إلى مرضه
وموته."
أشعر أن بعض اسئلة كانت هنا....



كريستوفر بريست الذي رحل عن عالمنا في بداية هذا الشهر، هو كاتب بريطاني شهير، ومن أبرز وأشهر رواياته رواية
The Prestige
التي تحولت للفيلم الشهير الذي أخرجه كريستوفر نولان قبل 18 عامًا تقريبًا.


~
فجر يوم الأربعاء - الحادي عشر من شعبان - 1445 هـ.

[Katerina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okay, I take it back, it was pleasantly schizophrenic.

[Tudor Ciocarlie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A dazzling meditation on memory and how it defines us, on schizophrenia, on reality and fiction, on the writer and his creation.

The Dream Archipelago, The Islanders and The Affirmation are together a masterpiece of literary fiction. I cannot imagine a reader who (regardless of what she/he normally reads) is not touched and whose life is not a little changed after the encounter with these wonderful writings.

[Hakim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Christopher Priest's The Affirmation is the seemingly straight-forward story of Peter Sinclair, a very depressed man who, in an attempt to face his inner demons and make some sense out of his life, writes his autobiography. However, Peter ends up writing "fiction"; a tale set in a world exceptionally exotic and dreamy. As the story unfolds, we learn that in this very world, another version of Peter wrote the same kind of "fiction" set in our world, for reasons I will not mention. This begs the question: which reality is fictional ? The author keeps you guessing.

Christopher Priest has this admirable ability to trigger different emotions in just a few paragraphs; awe, frustration, surprise, hope, empathy but above all anticipation. I never wanted to put this damn book down. Priest is absolutely amazing, in both form and content. He executes the story with surgical precision, flair and unbridled subtlety; every move the characters make in this book will eventually tip the scales.
This ultimately makes the trip more important than the destination. I understand some people hate the book because of its ending. William Gibson described Samuel Delany's Dhalgren as "A riddle that was never meant to be solved." I believe this also applies to The Affirmation.

[Liviu · Rating 5 out of 5]

So far I have read 3 C Priest novels and I utterly love the style of the author and the books are so compelling that you do not want to stop, though The Prestige kind of faded quickly from my memory, while The Separation left me with a somewhat bitter taste ( on further reflection, i think that's a book that people with an emotional connection to Britain will enjoy most, rather than a pure nationalistic British book that I originally thought)

The Affirmation gets back to the personal stage and for that it is so much more compelling than The Separation; a truly mind blowing book with a justly famous (and very appropriate) ending; the best description of it is as a novelization of the famous Escher print of two hands drawing each other

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book composed entirely of paradox: the poignantly hollow, the cohesively disparate, the conclusively unresolved, the familiarity of being lost and getting lost in the familiar. Anyone who has ever tried to write will recognize the impossible landscape laid out before us in this book. The greatest paradox of all is that it took a literary genius to write it.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Captivatingly enigmatic magic realist/sci-fi puzzle. I might have given it five stars if the main character wasn't such a sad sack. I don't have much patience for brooding protagonists who dwell on their broken relationships.

[Alfred Haplo · Rating 5 out of 5]

My reaction at the end of The Affirmation was to read it again. The words are exactly the same as the first time, as they will be with every reiterated read but my thoughts though, my thoughts kept evolving from imagining schizophrenia, to being stunned at its conclusion, and finally surrendering to deep admiration for Christopher Priest’s 1981 Sci-Fi Masterworks.

Reading this book was mentally immersive. Several times, I found my limbs locked in position, the tip of my thumb lodged between my teeth and my body angled towards the book as if in paralysis, even though my mind was in overdrive following the protagonist’s dual-narrative journey from London to dream archipelago to claim his “Lotterie” for a genetically-enhanced life. Though classified as sci-fi, the story is quintessential Priest in pushing the fringes of this genre into a unique hybrid of its own. This slow-burn of a psychological novel may be oft-overlooked in today’s popular lists but in the past 30 years, it has advanced steadily from reader to reader through word-of-mouth. So, whoever you are, I am recommending it to you.

The Affirmation should be read even if only for its superiority in craft. The writing is sophisticated despite its economy, no fancy schmancy sentences here, with simplicity used into great effect to showcase the complexity of an unraveling, hallucinating mind. A mind that splintered into a jumbled heap of memories that reassemble into slightly different stories depending on how each piece is remembered. The genius that is Priest deftly folds in layers and layers of increasingly inward-looking perceptions and delusions, all the while mounting the suspense towards a culmination at the end that knocked the breath out of me. I remember exhaling then, to swear an expletive.

The story has madness, but the storytelling has lucidity. No one less confident and skillful can write this story, which teetered on the edge of pretentiousness but Priest never faltered in his purposeful control. Where the story has flair, it did not have heart. I read The Affirmation with fascinated detachment, and was less impressed by the basic plot and the prosaic language but more by a brilliantly written concept of shifting identities. That could be why I had difficulty feeling empathy for Peter Sinclair, the protagonist, almost as if keeping an emotional distance safely separated me from his problems. A self-indulgent man, Sinclair (or Priest) writes himself (or Sinclair) standing between two parallel mirrors, where one’s reflection is a reflection of the other that is a reflection of another and on it goes to infinity. They are all him, and yet he is lost in himself.

Reality cease being a question when one’s being cease as reality. Sinclair, whose life this story revolves around, is a 29-year old Londoner who had a mental breakdown triggered by a series of upheavals - job redundancy, parental bereavement, break-up with girlfriend and home eviction. An opportunity arose for Sinclair to relocate to bucolic countryside but isolation and depression only served to spiral him further into the recesses of his mind. In seeking a higher truth about himself, Sinclair writes a falsified autobiography of his ideal self, who in turn writes an autobiography of his real self…. only to find himself locked in an endless existential loop.

In the spirit of The Affirmation, my review continues here.

[Nicholas Whyte · Rating 5 out of 5]

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2465975.html

I had a chat with Chris Priest at Eastercon, and asked him which of his books I should read that I had not read - I am familiar with both his early and his most recent work, but less clear on the middle. Without hesitation, he said that The Affirmation, published in 1981, is the book that his earlier novels lead to and his later works reflect on. A kind spouse got it for my birthday a couple of weeks ago and I devoured it this weekend in post-election haze.

I can see why Priest himself thinks of it as central to his œuvre. The book is about a binary existence, a writer based in England writing about his own life in a fictional archipelago where he can gain eternal life at the cost of his own memory; while his doppelgänger in the archipelago is writing about his life A strange place called England. Families, lovers, writing all intersect across the two strands of reality and we cannot be certain which, if either, is the more real. A number of his earlier books are about a clash between realities, but we readers are usually left less uncertain than we are here about which is "real". And a lot of his later books pick up themes from The Affirmation and take them further, or in a different direction. Certainly I feel that now I have read it, I appreciate better what Priest was doing in The Islanders and The Adjacent. It's a bit surprising that the only award it picked up was the Australian Ditmar (though I suppose there were just fewer aware in 1981; it lost the BSFA award to The Shadow of the Torturer). But the 2011 Gollancz SF Masterworks edition features a helpful introduction by Graham Sleight.

[Jo Sé · Rating 5 out of 5]

Utterly mind blowing. Hands down the best book about mental illness I’ve had the pleasure to read. I went into this with no experience of Christopher Priests writing apart from having seen the movie The Prestige, and that was made by one of the greatest film makers of all time, so hard to draw conclusions about the authors writing. After The Affirmation however, I will be trying to gorge myself with as much of his work as possible.

What I have noticed is that The Affirmation revolves around a series of Islands known as The Dream Archipelago which are also the subject of a few of his other novels but are not referred to as a series.

The line between fantasy and reality in this book is constantly blurred, sometimes switching between the two mid chapter, which gives a disorientating feel and to me seemed an excellent way of conveying the disorientation felt by people with mental illness during times of lucidity. The scenes in the archipelago also have a dream like quality, again showing the quality of Priests writing.

5* for me, a first rate exploration of mental illness and the themes of memory and identity.

[El Convincente · Rating 4 out of 5]

Entre los tópicos que los escritores sueltan en las entrevistas uno de los que más odio es el de "Los personajes me llevan adonde ellos quieren".

Ya saben: los escritores, esos demiurgos capaces de crear seres con vida propia, independientes de su voluntad.

Modestia pura, lo suyo.

En fin, que no soporto a los escritores que se ponen intensitos con el proceso de escritura.

Y voy y me leo una novela que básicamente trata de un tipo que se pone muy pero que muy intenso con una cosa que ha escrito.

Y aunque debería odiarla, ni siquiera me disgusta. ¿Por qué? No tengo ni la menor idea.

Puede que Priest sea ese cocinero único que consigue que te acabes el caldo de cilantro cuando ya solo el olor te tira para atrás.

Por él van las 4 estrellas (no tanto por la novela).

[Xandra · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is part of the SF Masterworks series although it's not really sci-fi (wouldn't call it a masterwork either). While I liked the idea, the writing is average and long-winded. In the hands of a better writer it could have been a great book.