An Inexplicable Story, Or, the Narrative of Questus Firmus Siculus

by Josef Škvorecký, Kaca Polackova Henley (Translator)

In an urn, sealed in the wall of an ancient Central American tomb, the burial chamber of the Mayan king K'inich Yax K'uk'Mo, a mysterious manuscript has been found. The archaeologists who find it are perplexed. The scroll is in Latin, and it is older than the 1,600-year-old tomb itself. It is the 'Narrative of Questus,' a Roman who lived in the 1st century AD, during the reign of Augustus. According to Patrick O. Enfield, the scholar entrusted with the task of translating and commenting on this spectacular find, there can be no doubt of its authenticity. The manuscript is subjected to 'every available test and to detailed linguistic scrutiny.' It is not a hoax. Although the scroll is damaged, it can be read, and it draws a detailed picture of the childhood and youth of the author. Questus is 19, an aspiring inventor who would like to create marvelous new machines for the Imperial army. His father is a remote figure, a military commander who is usually away on campaign. His mother, however, is anything but remote. Still young and delightfully pretty, she is a favourite of the Emperor and also of the poet Ovid (as a child Questuscalled him 'Uncle Ovid'). Ovid's The Art of Love has just been published, and the young diarist and his friends scrutinize it for sexual secrets, hidden meanings and scandal. Slowly, Questus realizes that one of those secrets involves his own mother...

Genres: Canada, Historical Fiction

182 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 2002

About the author

Josef Škvorecký, CM was a Czech writer and publisher who spent much of his life in Canada. Škvorecký was awarded the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1980. He and his wife were long-time supporters of Czech dissident writers before the fall of communism in that country. By turns humorous, wise, eloquent and humanistic, Škvorecký's fiction deals with several themes: the horrors of totalitarianism and repression, the expatriate experience, and the miracle of jazz.

Reviews

[Emma Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

EDIT: I have to write an "Amazon review" of this book for my Ovid seminar, so I thought I'd just stick it here, lol.

I always enjoy reading novels based on ancient Rome, especially when authors include some kind of speculative element. I suppose I could say that “Roman alternate history” is one of my favorite hyper-specific subgenres. As an example, Roma Eterna by Robert Silverberg—which chronicles the possible trajectory of a never-fallen Roman Empire throughout history—comes to mind. My favorite is probably Attis by Tom Holland, a very odd sort of present-day retelling of the events of the Pro Caelio that heavily features clowns. All that to say, An Inexplicable Story is certainly not the weirdest quasi-historical speculative fiction based on ancient Rome I’ve ever read—that distinction goes to Attis—but it’s up there.

An Inexplicable Story is an epistolary novel that divides cleanly into two parts: In the first section, we’re provided with a (fictional) manuscript written by the 19-year-old Questus, an aspiring Roman inventor. Questus’s narrative heavily features his “Uncle Ovid,” whom Questus realizes is hiding secrets that involve his own mother. The second section consists of letters written by various researches, academics, and others who track Questus’s influence into the New World and beyond.

What I appreciate the most about Skvorecky’s approach to Questus and Ovid’s story is that his storytelling method feels in some ways very Ovidian. I won’t spoil any key plot points, but in the second section of the novel, Skvorecky utilizes the epistolary format to present us with an interlocking set of stories that reference each other. It quickly becomes difficult to track where certain pieces of information have originated—and in fact Skvorecky leaves the answers to several burning questions ambiguous. This approach strikes me as mirroring the intermeshed stories of the Metamorphoses. Ovid sometimes nests so many stories within each other that it becomes difficult to track who narrates what story and how the narrators within narrators affect the way that tales are told. Even though the various narrators of An Inexplicable Story’s fictional documents are clear, by the end of the novel, the reader has very few other concrete answers.


***

Huh. This is certainly not the weirdest quasi-historical speculative fiction based on ancient Rome I’ve ever read—that distinction goes to Attis—but it’s up there.

I really like the concept: the book is half epistolary novel and half fragmented manuscript, and the multiplicity of voices and stories within stories mimics the ever-shifting tone of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. But doesn’t quite gel, not in the way I wanted it to.

[Ray · Rating 2 out of 5]

A jar containing Roman writings is found in a tomb in Central America. They suggest that a Roman called Questus reached the Americas in the first century AD.

There are also startling similarities between an excerpt from a lost play by Ovid in the newly found writings and a play by an obscure French playwright from the nineteenth century. The texts also hints as to why Ovid was exiled in the first place - was he knocking off the emperors wife?

When the texts from the jar are published someone comes forward with another "roman" text found in the South Atlantic. It shows that Questus got almost to Antarctica in his (probably) steam ship. Again echoes of another tale by Jules Verne.

Skvorecky hints and teases with mystery after mystery- and is obviously having fun with this book. For me it didn't quite work. This is a shame as I have read and enjoyed many other of his books.

[Randy Mcdonald · Rating 5 out of 5]

That Czechoslovak-Canadian writer Josef Skvorecky's 2002 novelAn Inexplicable Story can best be described as a pastiche should not be taken as a slur on the book. Rather, it should be taken as great praise. I can't think offhand of any other writer who could so effectively meld such disparate topics as the reasons for Ovid's exile to Tomid and his fate there, the abortive scientific revolution of the early Roman Empire, Mesoamerican state formation Nazi German submarines' exploits in the Kerguelens, Edgar Allan Poe's 1838 novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket and Jules Verne's 1897 Le Sphinx des glaces. Suffice it to say that, in An Inexplicable Story, Skvorecky managed to entirely rehabilitate the trope of the ancient hidden manuscript for the post-modern (or, perhaps rather, late modern) reader, disassociated fragments fused by scholarly conjecture in the context of a remarkably oddly globalized world. Ah, Tesalus.

[Matthew Leigh · Rating 4 out of 5]

It wouldn't be in complete good faith if I gave this late and more minor Škvorecký jeu d'esprit the full five stars, but it did keep me thoroughly amused through a day of recovery from parting company with my appendix. Ovid's exile has promoted so many responses in scholarship and fiction (for the latter I recommend David Malouf's 'an Imaginary Life') that it is likely to be the most familiar part of the story. The mutilated scroll on which the narrative of Questus Firmus Siculus is found leaves room for some nice parody of scholarly editing of papyri though as a Latinist I would have been grateful had detective novelist P. O. Enfield taken more care to get the ancient forms consistently correct in his notes. I will say no more save that the the later stages contain a wonderful version of how Ovid ended his life, observations on mysterious similarities between a Feydeau farce and a Roman comoedia trabeata, scenes from a Berlin junkshop, and a visit to the Kerguelen Islands. A treat.

[Ondřej Šefčík · Rating 3 out of 5]

Veru, prijemna literarni hricka na odpoledne... pobavi a neurazi, ba potesi... ale ovsem, Zbabelci to nejsou a but ani nemaji...

[Czarny Pies · Rating 3 out of 5]

I rather liked this loopy book by the great Czech expatriate Jospech Skvorecky which another Good Reads reviewer has already described as a pastiche. I only give it three stars so as to dissuade people who are unfamiliar with Skvorecky by starting with what in fact is a pastiche of monstrous proportions.

Questus Firmus Siculus is structured like an edition of Petronius' incomplete masterpriece Satyricon that I read for a course during my first year at Victoria College (UofT). The narrator begins by explaining that fragments of a Latin manuscript have been found. Using his knowledge of Latin history and literature, the narrator promises that he will try to reconstruct the complete narrative.

The hero is Questus Firms Siculus the son of mistress of Ovid (43 BC - 18 AD) and a talented inventor who creates a steam engine then sails off to America.

The novel starts like a parody of Robert Graves' I, Claudius series based on Suetonius but in the second half goes off the deep-end. In the second half of the book our hero reaches the Antarctic ocean where he is connected to Arthur Gordon Pym ( who is a character in separate novels by written by Edgar Allen Poe and Jules Verne).

The whole thing is like a skit from one of the undergraduate comedy revues that I saw at U of T. Having read Verne and Poe as a child and having studied Latin in secondary school, I found it funny. I am not sure who else would but if you are not sure look elsewhere in the Skvorecky catalogue which is filled with many better books.

[Patrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is Skvorecky's attempt at a Poe-like fantasy story mixed with historical fiction (what happened to Ovid?) He doesn't seem too invested in it, and I wasn't either, but it's very short and mildly interesting.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very good read but almost too far-fetched.