The Lost Civilization of Suolucidir. Susan Daitch

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      Praise for The Lost Civilization of Suolucidir

      “Daitch’s fantastically fun novel has shades of Umberto Eco and Paul Auster and is brainy, escapist fiction at its best. Structured like a Russian nesting doll, the book conceals several overlapping tales centered on the search for the mythical lost city of Suolucidir. The novel begins with grad student Ariel Bokser’s present-day search for the city, located somewhere in modern day Iran. The book then shifts to the heart of its story, the so-called Nieumacher papers, an inheritance from Ariel’s father (a consulting mineralogist for a mining company) that relates the narrative of Sidonie and Bruno Nieumacher’s quest for Suolucidir, beginning in 1936. The Nieumachers are a husband and wife; he’s a rare book forger and she’s a law student, and they are fleeing the West as much as they are searching in the East for Suolucidir. Setting off under the guidance of Bruno’s former Berlin professor, now a black market profiteer, the duo brave adversity to find the lost city, dodging British agents and Russian spies. The book then shifts further back in time to the story of Hilliard and Congreaves, two mismatched British explorers who met at the Possum Club, an explorer society, and who set off in 1914 in search of fabled fortune and instead encounter their fate. Daitch has constructed an intricate, absorbing narrative. The novel is like a Scheherazade tale, never quite giving the reader time or reason to pause. What exactly is Suolucidir? Lost city of the Hebrew tribes? A stand-in for colonialism’s heart of darkness? Wisely, the MacGuffin remains elusive. As one character says, ‘Invisible cities sometimes leave no trace of themselves. Who knows what cities lay under our feet?’ Perhaps Suolucidir is real, and still out there, awaiting discovery.” — Publishers Weekly, starred review

      “Susan Daitch has written a literary barnburner of epic proportions. The question buried at the core of The Lost Civilization of Suolucidir is one of empirical—or is the imperial?—knowledge itself. Her labyrinthine tale of archeological derring-do calls to mind both 1984 and 2666, and does so by looking backward in time as well as forward. It is also utterly original, the work of a visionary writer with an artistic sensibility all her own.”—Andrew Ervin, author of Burning Down George Orwell’s House

      “Susan Daitch’s The Lost Civilization of Suolucidir is a daring undertaking, the creation of an ancient land of fantastic proportions, its borders touching other countries we think we know while still remaining elusive and mysterious. This is a novel of archeology and history, of mythology and empire, powered by an undeniable call to adventure and a deep yearning for understanding, written by a novelist who manages to surprise on nearly every page.” —Matt Bell, author of Scrapper

      “In The Lost Civilization of Suolucidir, history is revealed as ghost and prankster, archaeological remnant, information feed. This search for a vanished city takes in rare book rooms and obituaries, travel records, borders drawn and redrawn by war, boxes of records from a sanatorium where Kafka stayed, a statuette of Disney’s Aladdin, and quotes from Ignatz Mouse and Samuel Johnson. Where is the city? Where are we? We are lost, and will one day be someone else’s Suolucidir, at best. In the meantime, Daitch’s latest is a beguiling and virtuoso companion to our inevitable end: a novel that wrenches, sentence by fine sentence, some order from the chaos, while never shortchanging the chaos itself.”—Mark Doten, author of The Infernal

      “Daitch’s novel is Indiana Jones for the introspective crowd—a continual, thrilling, and harrowing search for historical treasures.” —Foreword Magazine

       Praise for Susan Daitch

      “One of the most intelligent and attentive writers at work in the U.S. today.”—David Foster Wallace

      “It’s always a delight to discover a voice as original as Susan Daitch’s.” —Salman Rushdie

       THE LOST CIVILIZATION OF SUOLUCIDIR

      Susan Daitch

      City Lights Books | San Francisco

      Copyright © 2016 Susan Daitch

      All Rights Reserved

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Names: Daitch, Susan, author.

      Title: The lost civilization of Suolucidir / Susan Daitch.

      Description: San Francisco : City Lights Publishers, 2016.

      Identifiers: LCCN 2015049535 (print) | LCCN 2016003408 (ebook) | ISBN 9780872867000 (softcover) | ISBN 9780872867017 ()

      Subjects: LCSH: Archaeological expeditions—Fiction. | Extinct cities—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Literary. | FICTION / Historical. | FICTION / Action & Adventure. | FICTION / Jewish. | GSAFD: Adventure fiction. | Satire.

      Classification: LCC PS3554.A33 L67 2016 (print) | LCC PS3554.A33 (ebook) | DDC 813/.54—dc23

      LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015049535

      City Lights books are published at the City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94133.

      Visit our website: www.citylights.com

       CONTENTS

       First Collapse

       Silent, Deserted, Fallen Cities

       The Book of Smoke

       Hilliard and Congreaves

      Asoldier looked over the parapet and thought no army could even begin to crack open the towers that marked the corners of the city. A mason, though his spine ached from being torqued and twisted as he worked, wiped his nose on the back of his hand and was confident few foreigners could navigate the labyrinth he’d helped to construct. It ringed the metropolis like a moat, although no one in the city knew the word. Both the soldier with a view of the desert to the east and mountains to the west and the mason down below on the street felt safe; both looked out on landscape and urban geography from opposing perches, convinced there was no threat that would change the pattern of one day to the next. In the center of the city a cook watched her pots dance on hooks and knew that even if she ran out of her house, odds were good she wouldn’t make it out of the city before everything she took for granted would collapse around her ears.

      Elsewhere in town at that moment:

      A child was about to apologize for tormenting a cat. He twisted his hands behind his back, nervous, expecting blows, not sure what form punishment would take.

      A woman was about to drink a glass of wine when she thought her overseer wasn’t looking. She leaned against a broken mosaic of a winged lion, tiles making a cool grid pattern on her back. She thought she was hidden by a column and intended to swallow the glass in one gulp.

      A man was about to kiss his neighbor’s wife. He pulled her into an alley as she was leaving what passed as her house. The street was so busy, he thought, they both thought, no one was looking.

      An executioner was about to cut off the head of a runaway slave. The slave shook, so the executioner was unsure what the blade would actually sever when it fell, though he didn’t care much either way. Whatever body part was lopped off was all in a day’s work.

      A hungry traveler, having seen Hamoon Lake evaporate into a shiny