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In this brilliant debut, competing
visions of an obscure professor's life take a young reporter
from a sleepy New England town to the heart of an international
smuggling ring that may hold the secret to eternal life.
DESCRIPTION: Item 1: An alembic is the
top part of an apparatus used for distilling. This one is
made of sturdy green glass, thirty-six centimeters tall, eighteen
centimeters around at the widest point of its base. The top
part of the vessel is narrow and fluted and turns sharply
to the right; alembics are set over a still to collect and
carry vapors to another vessel. The vessel's inside bears
a crust of gray material that seems to be a mixture of lead,
iron, and antimony, as well as some organic matter, canine
and human bones. Scorch marks are visible on the outside bottom,
extending five centimeters up. No discernible odor.
Date of manufacture: unknown. Estimates
range from 100 b.c. to a.d. 300
Place of origin: Hellenistic Egypt. "Alembic" comes from the
Arabic "al-anbiq," which comes from the Greek "ambix," meaning
cup or beaker
Last known owner: Woldemar Löwendahl, Danish-Estonian
governor general of Tallinn.
The alembic was unearthed during the construction of Kassari
chapel on Kassari Island in April 1723 and brought to Löwendahl's
office that June. The governor general placed it on the top
shelf of an unfilled bookcase in the back corner of his office
and never noticed when it went missing two years, six months,
and seventeen days later...
When a twelfth-century Sicilian cat burglar
snatches a sack of artifacts from the king's geographer's
library, the tools and talismans of transmutation--and eternal
life--are soon scattered all over the world. Nine hundred
years later, a young Connecticut reporter finds evidence that
someone is collecting them again.
In the process of investigating the suspicious
death of a local professor, Paul Tomm finds the dead man's
heavily fortified office stuffed with books on alchemy. The
Geographer's Library entwines his contemporary reporting with
a chain of ancient stories-within-the-story, tracking the
last time each of the geographer's tools changed hands--some
bought, some stolen, some killed for.
The Geographer's Library is an extraordinary
debut, smart, stylishly written, and full of suspense. It
tempts with the glitter of antiquities and hooks with a chilling
plot.
Jon Fasman was born in
Chicago in 1975 and grew up in Washington, D.C. He was educated
at Brown and Oxford universities and has worked as a journalist
in Washington, D.C., New York, Oxford, and Moscow. His writing
has appeared in The Times Literary Supplement, Slate,
Legal Affairs, the Moscow Times, and The
Washington Post. He is now a writer and an editor for
The Economist's Web site.
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