WW2 Historical Fiction at its very best – SPAIN and GERMANY
Dual timeline novel set in PARIS and the Indian Ocean
1st February 2024
An Astronomer in Love by Antoine Laurain, dual timeline novel set in Paris and the Indian Ocean.
TR: Louise Rogers Lalaurie / Megan Jones
SHORTLISTED FOR THE EDWARD STANFORD TRAVEL WRITING AWARDS 2024 – FICTION WITH A SENSE OF PLACE
You can’t go wrong with the stories penned by this author. They have a charming swagger about them and prove up-lifting, full of pertinent observations and wry asides.
This is a dual timeline, swash-buckling adventure and the link between the two stories is a telescope used to observe the transit of Venus (which won’t happen again now until the 22nd Century). Oh, and there are also links between the two stories of among other things, a dodo, zebra and flying fish….
In 1760 Guillaume le Gentil sets off towards Pondichery to view the transit of Venus taking place in 1761, with the full support of King Louis XV. It is a long journey, full of new experiences and adventure, but he is thwarted by an unusual mist rising, which obscures the phenomenon at the point of the eclipse. He resolves to head towards Manila for a second sighting taking place 8 years later but given the political situation, he does not have free access to Spanish territory and thus resolves to return to Pondicherry in time to see the eclipse in 1769.
Xavier, meanwhile, in Paris 2012 (the year which – spoiler alert – marked the most recent transit of Venus 😉) is an estate agent who just happens to come across the very telescope used by Guillaume all those centuries ago. He moves it to his apartment where his son Olivier and he can observe their surroundings. He happens upon Alice in a neighbouring apartment, who seems to possess a stuffed zebra. The animal is the link in bringing them together, is part of the wonderfully imaginative narrative and although she withdraws for a period because there is just the suspicion that he is a peeping tom, with his strategically placed telescope….
Thwarted love (worry not, it all comes right in the end) and adventure are the hallmarks of this beautifully told tale. The author clearly revels in describing the high seas of the Indian Ocean and elsewhere, and opening the doors on to Paris and its inhabitants for his readers’ pleasure. It is a veritable fairytale for adults.
You could also read Guillaume Le Gentil’s first hand account of his voyages, if you were minded, in the nattily titled “Journey through the Seas of India, by Order of the King, at the moment of the Transit of Venus across the Sun on the 6th of June 1761 & the 3rd of the same month 1769” (the first volume was published by the Royal Press in 1779).
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