Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
Categories
Historical adventure fiction

THE GOLDEN MEAN

Annabel Lyon

A Novel

A masterpiece of a first novel that brings to vivid life the world of the ancient Greeks.

Shortlisted for the Governor General's Award 2009 Shortlisted for The Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize 2009 Shortlisted for the Giller Prize 2009

For seven years, from 342-335 BC, the philosopher Aristotle served as tutor to the teenage Alexander the Great. Aristotle was born in Stageira, Macedonia, studied in Athens under the philosopher Plato, and after some years of travel returned to the Macedonian court, seeking to advance his career. He was assigned to tutor King Philip's heir, Alexander, and began to participate in the ever more sinister intrigues of the warrior court. But Philip lost interest in him and began to favour others. Aristotle was passed over for a politically useful position in a powerful neighbouring state.

Prince Alexander, meanwhile, grew from a bright, affectionate boy to an increasingly powerful and ambitious young man, resentful of his father's bullying. Aristotle tried to influence the prince, but he soon realized that his teachings had grown twisted in the young man's mind. The climax of Aristotle's disillusionment occurred at the battle of Chaironea, where he observed father and son in battle. Their victory secured Macedonian dominion over a number of Greek states, including Athens, but still Aristotle was not granted a much-coveted foreign assignment. He felt he had failed both in his career ambitions and as a philosopher. Soon the king married a second, younger wife, threatening to displace Alexander with a new heir. Court politics quickly escalated to a murderous climax.

Aristotle and Alexander embody both sides of the modern psyche: the explorer/innovator and the bloody conqueror. Told in the frank, earthy, and engaging voice of Aristotle himself, The Golden Mean demonstrates dramatically that these traits are tragically not separable.

Annabel Lyon's story collection Oxygen (2000) was published to wide acclaim, and was nominated for the Danuta Gleed and ReLit awards. Her collection of novellas, The Best Thing for You (McClelland&Stewart, 2004) was also highly praised. Annabel Lyon has studied music, philosophy, and law. She lives in Vancouver with her partner and two children, and writes full time.

US-American rights have sold at auction to Sonny Mehta at Knopf.

Available products
Book Published by Knopf/Vintage
Book Published by Knopf/Vintage

Comments

An audacious attempt to create a flesh and blood Aristotle, with intimate glances into his psyche.

In Lyon's clever hands, more than two thousand years of difference are made to disappear and Aristotle feels as real and accessible as the man next door. With this powerful, readable act of the imagination, Annabel Lyon proves that she can go anywhere it pleases her to go.

The Golden Mean, so full of intellect, is a pleasure to read. If excellence is our standard, then this novel will certainly flourish.

A crisply written, painstakingly researched book, and Lyon ably inhabits 'the greatest mind of all time.'

Annabel Lyon is a sharp, funny, and subversive writer who knows how tokeep her readers off-balance.... What is exhilarating about Lyon's work is that she has enough confidence in her imagination and her craft so that she can borrow from the best and still create art that is absolutely her own.

Lyon must be applauded for a daring and challenging approach to fiction.

Wins Writer's Trust Award 2009 Short-Listed for the Governor-General's Awards 2009 Long-listed for the Giller Prize 2009

Annabel Lyon's Aristotle is the most fully-realized historical character in contemporary fiction. The Golden Mean engenders in the reader the same helpless sensitivity to the ferocious beauty of the world that is Aristotle's disease. In this alarmingly confident and transporting debut novel, Lyon offers us that rarest of treats: a book about philosophy, about the power of ideas, that chortles and sings like an earthy romance.

Annabel Lyon's writing is fresh, unexpected, and truthful. These three tales explore how we talk to each other and what we notice changing in those we love. Her delivery is savvy, succinct, and wondrous.

Here is yearning, transgression, lust, and all the consequences. Lyon's writing is immaculately clean and driven. These novellas bristle with heat and blood-rushing suspense. Characters wholly unexpected and eerily familiar, sharply felt. Lyon is a dazzling stylist. Here is mastery.

Lyon [has] established herself as this generation's answer to Alice Munro. A master of wordplay and storytelling, Lyon takes readers deep into the hearts and secret desires of her characters.

A taut, polished novel that will hold your attention from start to finish. It is at times funny, thought-provoking, sensual and suspenseful.

The harsh light of the classical world is prone to bleach away all humanity and leave only the bare outline of myth. Not so in Annabel Lyon's The Golden Mean, in which Aristotle is haunted by agonies of the flesh and spirit, and Alexander, his most famous pupil, struggles to be Olympian despite a murderous nature and merely human powers. We witness their brilliance emerging through their pain and ignorance.

An exhilarating book, both brilliant and profound. Annabel Lyon's spare, fluid, utterly convincing prose pulls us headlong into Aristotle's original mind. Only Lyon's great-hearted intelligence could have imagined and achieved the brave ambition of this book. Vital, ferocious and true, The Golden Mean is an oracular vision of the past made present.

I absolutely loved The Golden Mean. Annabel Lyon brings the philosophers and warriors, artists and whores, princes and slaves of ancient Macedonia alive, with warmth, wit and poignancy. Impeccably researched and brilliantly told, this novel is utterly convincing.