Declare - Tim Powers

This book is fantastic! It’s as if John le Carré wrote a fantasy espionage novel. Wow! Powers (author of “Anubis Gates”, which is also delightful) has crafted an ingenious “secret history”. He intermixes real people and real events to craft an amazing story about what “really” happened in the struggle between East and West in the 40s, 50s and 60s. This novel is really fascinating. The present in the story is 1963, as our main character is summoned back to the British Secret Service to complete a mission that ended in disaster in 1948. Sections of the novel are set in 1941 Paris during the occupation, 1945 Berlin just after the end of the war, 1948 Eastern Turkey, and of course the “present day” action in 1963, which mostly takes place in the Middle East. Very Le Carré-esque, but le Carré never wrote about dark desert springs that talk, among other fantastic elements. It’s a spy story, it’s a fantasy story, it’s alternate history, it’s a romance.

One thing I thought was particularly impressive was Powers’ ability to include real events and real people into this wondrous jigsaw puzzle of an alternate history. References are made to notorious double agent Kim Philby, his father and noted “Arabist” St. John Philby, lapsed priest and Soviet spy Theodore Maly, T. E. Lawrence (of course), Philby’s recruiter and handler Guy Burgess, and many more. Powers even manages to weave in the historical fact that Kim Philby had a head injury in Beirut during 1963. Just mind-bogglingly well researched.

Fun side note: As you know, I am very willing to “suspend disbelief”. But there was one anachronism early on in the book that just pulled me up short. In a passage set in London in 1963, one character mentions an audience with Pope Pius XII that happened only weeks ago. Pius XII was long dead in 1963. Why this bugged me when other obviously fantastical elements did not, is a mystery. Perhaps it was because the other historical references were otherwise impeccably researched.

So I wrote the author. In part, I asked whether it was an intentionally sly wink to those paying attention that the supernatural was going to play a larger part in the narrative going forward, as in an audience with a dead Pope. Powers wrote back! He said it was just a mistake, and said he was surprised I was the first person to notice, almost 20 years after the book was published. He said he did like my idea of an audience with a dead Pope, though! Affirmation, baby!

I think I am going to read a lot more Powers.