One is autophobic and Irish, the other anthropophobic, Scottish… and sapiosexual. Their confrontation over nearly a century will give rise to some of the key events of the turn of the millennium, in particular the attacks of September 11, 2001.
In his latest novel, Bernard Werber embarks on a philosophical-erudite one-upmanship with two new characters of strong, almost superhuman women. The didacticism that characterizes it finds all the freshness of Les Ants, the series that launched it 30 years ago.
We learn in particular that at Ve century, two queens of the Franks, Brunehaut and Frédégonde, had an implacable hatred for each other, through interposed husbands. That gregarious has a cousin, egregore, which can refer to team spirit. And of course that anthropophobes are afraid of close contact with others and autophobes of being alone, or that sapiosexuals are seduced by intelligence.
There are a few hiccups, echoes of his sometimes annoying whims. For example, the conviction that contrary to what demographers claim, the world population will not experience a peak below 10 billion, in particular because China is lying and is not a victim of a declining birth rate. Another downside, excerpts from Werber’s Encyclopaedias of Relative and Absolute Knowledge support certain concepts with varying degrees of success.
We find all the same with great joy the French novelist in the impressionistic exploration of intellectual concepts which fascinate him because they are rooted in his personal experience – the fear of the crowd and the fascination it inspires, the contempt of the most beasts. His series sometimes sin by their moralizing tone, like the ecologist fable surrounding bees.
The diagonal of the queens
Berhard Weber
Albin Michael
459 pages