From the imagination of one of the most brilliant writers of our
time and bestselling author of The Life of Thomas More, a
novel that playfully imagines how the "modern" era might appear to
a thinker seventeen centuries hence.
At the turn of the 38th century, London's greatest orator, Plato,
is known for his lectures on the long, tumultuous history of his
now tranquil city. Plato focuses on the obscure and confusing era
that began in A.D. 1500, the Age of Mouldwarp. His subjects include
Sigmund Freud's comic masterpiece "Jokes and Their Relation to the
Subconscious," and Charles D.'s greatest novel, "The Origin of
Species." He explores the rituals of Mouldwarp, and the later cult
of webs and nets that enslaved the population. By the end of his
lecture series, however, Plato has been drawn closer to the subject
of his fascination than he could ever have anticipated. At once
funny and erudite, The Plato Papers is a smart and
entertaining look at how the future is imagined, the present
absorbed, and the past misrepresented.