Declare
OCLC 50031363 | |
Declare (2000) is a supernatural spy novel by American author Tim Powers. The novel presents a secret history of the Cold War, and earned several major fantasy fiction awards.
Plot summary
The non-linear plot, shifting back and forth in time from the 1940s to the 1960s, mainly concerns Andrew Hale, a scholar and occasional operative for a secret
the Great Game, the prolonged geopolitical conflict between the British and Russian empires in the 19th century over domination of Central Asia, was actually part of Operation Declare. The Okhrana
, or Tsarist secret police, are cast as the Russian counterpart to Operation Declare.
A sub-plot concerns Hale's on-off romance with Spaniard Elena Teresa Ceniza-Bendiga. A devoted
Lubyanka prison, she returns to her faith upon discovering the horrible motivation behind the deliberate mass starvation and violent political purges of Stalinist Russia: the placation of an entity called Zat al-Dawahi ("Mistress of Misfortunes") or Machikha Nash ("our stepmother"), a demonic being who demanded human sacrifice
in exchange for protecting the nation from foreign invasion.
Writing
In a brief afterword, Powers discusses some of his sources and writing methods. Philby's father,
Rub' al Khali) was extensively used as source material for the novel. Rudyard Kipling's 1901 novel Kim, about the Great Game, also supplied inspiration and epigraphs. Powers's self-imposed rules prohibited him from disregarding established historical facts and timelines, instead finding alternate explanations for events (e.g., a real-life 1883 earthquake near Mount Ararat is part of the novel's backstory; and a peripheral comment attributed to British Army officer T. E. Lawrence by playwright George Bernard Shaw
is interpreted as proof of Lawrence's involvement in Operation Declare.)
Reception
In 2001 Declare won both the
Best Novel[1] and the International Horror Guild Award for Best Novel, and was nominated for a Locus Award.[1] It also appeared on the final ballot for the Nebula Award,[1] however it was later determined to be ineligible because of the limited edition that appeared the year prior to the trade edition.[2] It was published in the UK for the first time in 2010 and subsequently shortlisted for the 2011 Arthur C. Clarke Award
for best science fiction novel.
References
- ^ a b c "2001 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved 2009-07-21.
- ^ "Declare ineligible for 2001 Nebula Award". SFWA. Archived from the original on 2007-12-29. Retrieved 2009-07-21.
External links
- Declare title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- The Works of Tim Powers, the author's authorized website, has an interview focusing on Declare, and an extensive publishing history of the book with images from and of the various editions.
- Powers comments on the genesis of the book in an interview in the March 1998 issue of Locus.
- He comments on its relationship to actual history and Roman Catholicismin an interview in the February 2002 Locus.