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Summary: What would you do?: characters at the limit
Review: Iain Pears uses a single region (Provence, around Avignon) and a common thread (a manuscript on philosophy)to illustrate three different moments in Western civlization and the lives of three different men who had to make difficult moral choices. It happens that each historical moment is one when civilization, the whole order of society, is about to crumble down in a great catastrophe, all of which makes the heroes' choices all the more painful and exasperating.Pears skillfully interweaves the three stories: in the Fifth century, Manlius Hippomanes, a wealthy and educated Gallic Roman and a community leader, is faced with hard choices regarding the impending conquest of Rome by the Northern barbarians. What should he do? Fight a lost battle just for honor's sake, or negotiate with the oncoming forces to try to save what he can from Roman civilization? Not easy to decide. In the Fourteenth century, Olivier de Noyen is a young man working for a Cardinal at the Papal court, then settled in Avignon. He has found Manlius's manuscript, "The Dream of Scipio" and is studying it with a wise Jew with whose servant he falls in love. As the great Plague sets in, political intrigues start boiling, with Olivier's master a prominent figure. At some point Olivier will have to decide between remaining loyal to his master and being a part in the unfair condemnation of Jews as the cause of the Plague, or changing his time's history for the sake of love and fairness, betraying his master. And Julien Barneuve, a scholar, is forced after the Nazi invasion of France to decide between resisting the invaders by force with no chance of winning, or collaborate with them in order to civilize them and save French culture. It won't be easy as he is desperately in love with a Jewish woman. I think Pears has done a very well rounded work, keeping the three stories different, but tied together by common themes and situations. Each one of the three main characters is different from the other two, all of them intelligent but with distinctive qualities and shortcomings, as well as with differing stances in life in terms of power, status and money. Each one of them has a love story with a woman with whom there is no chance of a normal loving relationship, for different reasons. In each story the Jews are threatened (while never degenerating into a simple pamphlet). Each story is very beautiful, moving and exciting, and Pears manages to keep a near perfect symmetry between the three of them, in terms of space, tone, and quality of writing. Pears is also very good at depicting, in an economical yet rich way, landscapes, towns, garments and people. More than just a novel, I think this is one of the best books written in the last years, at least among those I have read. It is erudite yet never pedantic; complex but at the same time clear. But the bottom line is the stories are good and cleverly intertwined.
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Summary: One's View of Events Depends on One's Context
Review: Apparantly inspired by a short story of Borges (on the rewriting of Don Quixote), we view the quest of four individuals living centuries apart, albiet each in a time of social and political chaos, to determine life's purpose. The initial slow read occasioned by the need to come to grips with the several different sets of characters proves well worth the effort.
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Summary: Not a beach book for sure!
Review: "Scipio" is one of the best novels I've read in years, and I read a lot! Be forewarned by the few negative reviews here on Amazon--to fully appreciate this book you should be interested in history, philosophy, and above all willing to think about how one discerns the right course of action when presented with a moral dilemma. If you're willing to take on the challenge, you're in for a treat!
Pears presents the story of three men in three different historical periods in Southern France. The paralells are eerie--in each case the world is sliding into chaos--the fall of the Roman Empire, the scourge of the Black Death, and the occupation of France by the Germans in WWII. Each man is presented with the same moral dilemmas--does one fight shoulder to shoulder with one's friends in a cause that is probably hopeless? should one betray a friend to save many others? is following our principles at all important when the world crumbles around us? is saving "civilization" the highest goal--or our our responsibilities less lofty--to our family and friends and those we love?
Each protagonist has a love in his life, a dark haired muse, and Pears weaves three unconventional but utterly believable love stories through the novel. That this is also a literary device to verbalize the moral issues presented doesn't ruin the portraits of these three independent, thoughtful, courageous women.
The role of the Jews in this story is also fascinating--in each case they are the pawns of history, as men of power exploit anti-Semitism for their own purposes, either persecuting or in one case protecting them, never out of moral conviction but rather to further other ends.
Our protagonists meet three different ends, and Pears leaves us to judge for ourselves who followed the right path. One achieves his goals--at great cost--and retires to live out his life. One recognizes he has been on the wrong path all along and dies a terrible death in a last grand gesture to redeem himself. One survives with his love, but also at great cost.
Each reader will reach their own conclusions--but Pears also invites us to look at how history judges these three. In the history books one man is a saint, one a traitor, one disappears without a trace. It's said history is written by the winners--if this is so what can we learn from it, other than how to "win?"
I hope one of my book clubs can be persuaded to read this--one could discuss it for hours!
Rating: 
Summary: Intelligent and thought provoking
Review: The central conflict at the heart of "The Dream of Scipio" is whether a civilisation should be defended with force, or whether it can absorb its enemies and convert them to its mores without in turn being converted to "barbarism" by the conquerors. Pears selects a common region (centred around Avignon) and three distinct historical periods to explore this concept. The three stories are linked by historic documents passed surviving over the generations, and by a common issue of Jewish persecution in Europe. Initially the juxtaposition of the three stories seems a little awkward - as the reader is moved back and forth across fifteen centuries, switching between the three strands of the narrative in the course of a very few pages. Unlike "An Instance of the Fingerpost" this is not compartmentalised into distinct stories in separate sections. However, it is this deliberate use of a disjointed narrative that forces the reader to break out of historical complacency. Reading of the events of the fifth century, when civilisation is "saved" through conquest, it seems a perfectly rational course of action to save culture for posterity through converting the conqueror. Comparing this, within a few pages, with the Nazi occupation of France in the last century, and historical detachment is brought up against direct comparisons with more recent reality - can acquiesence and conversion really work? The thread of anti-Jewish pogroms also runs through the story, along with other religious persecutions. This emphasises the horrific consequences of failing to maintain "civilised" standards, even if this is perceived as a temporary expediency. Examining a single event from different vantage points was, of course, what made "An Instance of the Fingerpost" so successful story. That device is used here to equal success, but it is a single concept examined indirectly from different vantage points in time. It works extremely well, and - though not a book to attempt on a hangover - makes for compelling reading.
Rating: 
Summary: Didn't finish
Review: Gave up at around 150 pages. I received a copy of Christopher Moore's "Island of the Sequined Love Nun" that I ordered from Amazon. "Scipio" was at best interesting, and usually boring, so I had no hesitation to put it down to pick up the Moore book. Keep in mind, however, that Christopher Moore is a favorite of mine, and I just knew his book would fun, and "Scipio" just wasn't holding my interest.
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Summary: women give meaning to men's lives
Review: It is a kind of a book i read at least twice: first i swallow it to learn the plot, the developments, the resolution. Second, i roam through it when in a mood to ponder, to reflect, to contemplate on my personal or universal issues. The book stays permanently on my bedside table until an equal substitute emerges.
This novel transpires as a braid, a meticulous and whimsical plait of three strands. The three men-the three strands- are driven and connected through centuries by an ancient manuscript. the first man lives around the year of 475. Another man lives about 800 years later, but at the same place. Enchanted by copying and studying ancient documents, he comes across the Dream of Scipio, the manuscript, and applies it to his own life. Once he casts a brisk glance at a young women and becomes a poet. Then an epidemic of plague breaks out. Olivier, the poet, gets some of the blame for it.
The third man has spent some time on the battlefields of WW1, comes home disenfranchised with a record of killing a man, the experience he has never forgotten. For truths, values and answers he turns to history and meets a woman.
The women in the book are strong and vulnerable, complete and caring, smart and unpredictable. They are memorable vignettes of remarkable females who keep the world up and running.
The novel flows smoothly and fluently proving how we are all connected by places, ideas and times. The writer neither takes sides, nor prescribes any moral choices or decisions. He involves us in taking pleasure and pride in pure living while we are weaving our own interpretations of the book. An excellent read for an inquisitive mind of a perennial learner!
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Summary: Six Degrees of SCIPIO: Pears Weaves a Tangled Web
Review: Civilization is the forest that people can't see for the trees; the crowd that we can't see because we're part of it. The three protagonists in Iain Pears' THE DREAM OF SCIPIO are surrounded by people they love, admire, respect, believe, detest, distrust, and hate. While each man occupies the same few square miles of earth in Provence, France, each is separated by centuries at three crisis periods in history: Manlius Hippomanes at the end of the Roman Empire, Olivier de Noyen during the Great Schism at the onset of the Black Plague, and Julien Barneuve in the midst of the Second World War. Pears does not pass judgement on his characters; each man's fate comes as a result of what he does, or what he fails to do. Still, each seemingly insignificant deed committed yesterday reverberates through today into tomorrow. Each man is faced with the same unenviable choice: when the world is the burning house, do you rush in to preserve possessions and loved ones or do you sacrifice these people and things, letting the house burn for the better of future generations? One man will turn his back to the past and look only to the future, making his decisions strategically no matter what it ultimately costs him. Another will turn a blind eye, complacently living in the present, regardless of what happened in the past or what is foreshadowed in the future. Only one will rely on his own humanity and faith to guide him, saving lives even as he himself is sacrificed, without a second thought about the fate of civilization. Pears compellingly weaves these three plots into a rich and entertaining fictional narrative rooted in real historical events. On a deeper level, however, SCIPIO raises difficult questions that are all too relevant in today's tumultuous world, because perhaps we are at now at a crisis point of our own. What makes any decision right or wrong? Would we, in a difficult position, make better choices? What should we believe when even truth is corrupted by time? History is our attempt to keep track of civilization, but it's a biased account, written by the winners, the ones that survive. Is it a flaw in human nature that whether or not we know our history, we seem doomed to repeat it? Perhaps this is true because, whether our own intentions are good or less than noble, we never act alone.
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Summary: If you can just get through the first 100 pages...
Review: ... then you'll probably get through the whole book. But it is tedious, pedantic, and utterly lacking in engagement. By the time the book ended, I had finally become interested in two of the three main characters, but really wish I just hadn't read it at all. The best thing about it is the beautiful cover!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: One of my favorite books. It may take a few pages to get used to the unique style of the prose and the format of the plot; but it is well worth your patience. It is refreshing to see such a high degree of talent, effort and skill combined in a contemporary novel. Iain Pears respects his audience.
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Summary: This one's for history buffs!
Review: In this complex novel author Iain Pears skillfully weaves together three connected stories, each of which is set during a time civilization was in a state of collapse: the last days of the Roman Empire in the West; the plague year 1348; France during the German occupation in World War II. All three stories are set in Avignon (in 1310 the Papacy moved to that city because of disorder in Rome and would remain there until 1378) and the surrounding Provencal countryside. The thread running through the three stories, all of which deal with moral dilemmas posed by an oncoming collapse, is the title of the book, a manuscript entitled "The Dream of Scipio," written by a fifth-century Roman, Manlius, who converts to Christianity in order to try to preserve what is left of the Western Roman Empire. The manuscript is discovered by Olivier de Noyen, poet, scholar, aide to a powerful Cardinal, in 1348, and rediscovered in 20th-century France by intellectual Julien Barneuve. In each of the stories the protagonists are faced with moral choices--must a few be sacrificed to save the many? And it's left to the reader to determine whether they've made the right choices or not. Pears, with his deadpan prose, offers no opinion. The tale is a chilly one. (Some may put the book down and select another after reading the opening sentence.) And if you stick with it you'll probably be consulting reference books to read up on the history of the periods Pears writes about (he helpfully supplies a timeline). Pears makes no missteps. He accomplishes what he sets out to do, but when you've finished it you'll probably want to run outside and take a walk in the sunshine.
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