Having just blogged on up-to-the-minute German Voynichiana, what of the rest of Europe? Here’s a quick sampling to whet your appetite, should you ever wish to feast on such morcels…
- (2008) El castillo de las estrellas Enrique Joven [mentioned here]
Having worked with Enrique recently (he generously translated my History Today telescope article so that it could appear in Astronomia magazine), I’m very much looking forward to the forthcoming English translation of his novel… even if I do still have to wait until June 2009. *sigh*
- (2007) El Quinto Mandamiento Eric Frattini [mentioned here]
Elderly professor, Voynich manuscript, high-level Vatican/Jesuit conspiracy, corrupt cardinal, people learn of the VMs and then they get killed, how will it all end?, la-di-da.
- (2008) El libro maldito de los templarios Francisco Díaz Valladares [mentioned here]
Yes, once again it’s those pesky Templars and their accursed book (what, the VMs? Quelle surprise!) *sigh*
- (2007) LA PIEDRA FILOSOFAL Iñaki Uriarte [mentioned here]
The VMs, the Philosophers’ Stone and quantum physics all get woven together here: though any Voynich book without evil Jesuit priests and lost Templar treasure will always move swiftly to the top of my list, who’s to say what this will be like? All the same, first-time novelists probably have more than enough things to worry about without lumping the weighty baggage of the VMs onto their camel’s back.
- (2007) Manuscrit MS 408 Thierry Maugenest
According to Dennis Stallings, Maugenest’s story describes how Roger Bacon wrote the VMs during his 13-year confinement – and how Bacon’s ideas are so powerful that anyone who now tries to read them falls into an irreversible coma. Hmmm… though I must confess that Jacques Derrida’s “Of Grammatology” did give me a headache for a week afterwards, Maugenest might just be stretching believability past its breaking point here. Oh well!
According to Thierry Maugenest’s novel Manuscrit MS 408, Roger Bacon’s ideas were so far in advance of human knowledge, then and now, that the present human mind is unable to handle them, with disastrous results for anyone who tries. Maugenest mentions Buddhist ideas of how the mind must be ready to receive certain kinds of knowledge, and has Johannes Kepler point out to Rudolph II what a shock the heliocentric theory was to the conventional wisdom of that day.
Maugenest does avoid Knights Templar, evil Jesuits, and the other things we are both thoroughly tired of. For Voynichomanes, a prime interest is that the novel gives a fairly detailed account of the Voynichese system, though on inspection it doesn’t fit the facts. I plan a more detailed review.