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Summary
Summary
Equilateral is an intellectual comedy set just before the turn of the century in Egypt. A British astronomer, Thayer, high on Darwin and other progressive scientists of the age, has come to believe that beings more highly evolved than us are alive on Mars (he has evidence) and that there will be a perfect moment in which we can signal to them that we are here too. He gets the support and funding for a massive project to build the Equilateral, a triangle with sides hundreds of miles long, in the desert of Egypt in time for that perfect window. But as work progresses, the Egyptian workers, less evolved than the British, are also less than cooperative, and a bout of malaria that seems to activate at the worst moments makes it all much more confusing and complex than Thayer ever imagined. We see Thayer also through the eyes of two women--a triangle of another sort--a romantic one that involves a secretary who looks after Thayer but doesn't suffer fools, and Binta, a houseservant he covets but can't communicate with--and through them we catch sight of the depth of self-delusion and the folly of the enterprise.
Equilateral is written with a subtle, sly humor, but it's also a model of reserve and historical accuracy; it's about many things, including Empire and colonization and exploration; it's about "the other" and who that other might be. We would like to talk to the stars, and yet we can barely talk to each other.
Author Notes
Ken Kalfus is an American writer who has lived in Paris, Dublin, Belgrade, and most recently, Moscow. His first book, Thirst (also available from WSP), was one of the most celebrated story collections in recent years, meriting inclusion in the best-of-the-year lists of the New York Times, Salon, the Village Voice, and The Philadelphia Inquirer.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Egypt's Western Desert in the 1880s provides the setting for this slyly satirical novel from National Book Award finalist Kalfus (A Disorder Peculiar to the Country). Convinced that intelligent life exists on Mars, famous astronomer Sanford Thayer has won worldwide backing to excavate an enormous equilateral triangle from the desert as a signal to the Martians. But a workforce of nearly a million Arab laborers, or fellahin, working toward a goal in which they don't believe, combined with the arrogance of their British overseers, make for a combustible mixture. Thayer battles malingering illness as his self-imposed deadline approaches, while his chief engineer, Wilson Ballard, keeps the men in line with increasingly harsh methods, only partly tempered by Thayer's trusted longtime secretary, Miss Keaton. Past romantic history between the two, coupled with Thayer's new interest in Bedouin servant girl Bint, produces another kind of triangle. Kalfus wittily skewers the Europeans' cosmic fantasies before reaching the ambiguous ending, which somewhat strains credibility but befits the story's equal attention to the wonder of prospective first contact and absurdity of human self-delusion. Agent: Christy Fletcher, Fletcher & Co. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Guardian Review
In the late 19th century, telescopic observations of Mars appeared to show artificially constructed channels across the planet's surface. So began the "canal craze" and increasingly elaborate speculations about the aliens who built these epic irrigation systems. Equilateral is set in the 1890s in the Egyptian desert, where British astronomer Sanford Thayer is overseeing the construction of a vast equilateral triangle: each side a trench 306 miles long and five miles wide that will provide a clear signal to Martian astronomers of the presence of intelligent life on Earth. There is also another triangle at play in that Thayer's secretary, Miss Keaton, has a crush on him, but the professor only has eyes for a local serving girl. The stage is thus set for a comedy, but Kalfus's comedy of ideas is as dry as the scorched desert winds, and as black as the pitch poured into the Equilateral's trenches. And it cannot be an arbitrary fact that this novel has 32 chapters, providing one more mystery to ponder after the beautifully judged, haunting conclusion of this highly intelligent and rich work of fiction. Steven Poole - Steven Poole In the late 19th century, telescopic observations of Mars appeared to show artificially constructed channels across the planet's surface. So began the "canal craze" and increasingly elaborate speculations about the aliens who built these epic irrigation systems. - Steven Poole.
Kirkus Review
The fifth book and third novel by Kalfus (whose wonderful A Disorder Peculiar to the Country, a National Book Award finalist of 2006, dared to make 9/11 the backdrop to a divorce comedy) is a slender but ambitious tragicomedy of ideas set in 1890s Egypt. British astronomer Sanford Thayer has mounted a gigantic international scientific and engineering effort--employing 900,000 fellahin--to dig out an equilateral triangle, each side 300 miles long, in the desolate Western Desert. His plan is to put nearly 5,000 square miles of pitch into the excavation and to set it afire...at a moment in the summer of 1894 when the desert will be clearly visible to Mars. The geometric conflagration cannot fail, he believes, to attract the attention of the no-doubt highly evolved inhabitants of the red planet, beings whose phenomenally impressive canal-building Thayer and other stargazers have for years been watching and mapping and/or fooling themselves about. There is another sort of triangle in play here, a romantic one involving the obsessive Thayer, a man near physical collapse and largely confined to quarters in the makeshift village at remote Point A, and two females: Miss Keaton, Thayer's limitlessly competent and patient helpmeet/assistant, and a young Arab serving girl who speaks no English. A compelling portrait emerges not only of Thayer and his brand of scientific imperialism, but also of 19th-century positivistic science at its most arrogant. Thayer proceeds with an air of utter certainty. Progress knows only one path, as he sees it, and the Earth is a pliant female creature whose duty it is to yield her secrets to the probing male scientist and his adjunct, the engineer. But there are forces and mysteries at work here that are beyond him. Kalfus maps the boundary between science and mysticism while simultaneously muddying, in a way the 20th century soon would, the previously bright line between scientific certainty and arrogant, self-deluded error.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Kalfus' previous novel, A Disorder Peculiar to the Country (2006), won raves for its trenchant satire of post-9/11 relationships and garnered a National Book Award nomination. Coloring outside the lines of mainstream fiction and into alternative history, his latest work tells the fanciful story of Sanford Thayer, a famous nineteenth-century astronomer who galvanizes support for a grandiose plan to a light a triangular beacon in the Egyptian desert bright enough to captivate earth's Martian neighbors. Inspired by the 1877 discovery by colleague Giovanni Schiaparelli of Martian canals (in reality, later debunked as an optical illusion), Thayer marshals the financial support of businessmen worldwide who salivate over the bounty Martians will bestow on earth when they realize its inhabitants are civilized, too. Yet only weeks away from its planned completion, construction of the triangular trench, dubbed the Equilateral, is going badly, with Thayer fighting fevers and insurrections from the project's Arab excavators. Although Kalfus' new novel may appeal to a more selective audience, his writing takes a big step forward with stylistic elegance and deeper insights into human nature.--Hays, Carl Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
SET in the scorching heat of the Egyptian desert at the end of the 19th century, Ken Kalfus's new novel follows a fictional British astronomer's attempt to make contact with Mars. Hundreds of thousands of men are digging the gigantic equilateral triangle with which Sanford Thayer intends to send a signal to his fellow astronomers on the red planet. Once finished, each side will consist of a paved trench more than 300 miles long and exactly one seventy-third of Earth's circumference. The trenches, five miles wide, are deep enough to be filled with a 12-inch layer of petroleum that will flow from 309 taps connected to a pipeline. The huge black triangle set against the white desert sand will prove the existence of terrestrial intelligence to the Martians, Thayer argues, because the equal-sided triangle is part of the two planets' "shared knowledge of trigonometry." The equilateral triangle is, he believes, the "basis for all human art and construction." Thayer and his crew are in a race against time. As Earth and Mars move closer to each other in their orbital dance - half a million miles each day - a deadline is approaching. According to Thayer's calculations, the giant triangle needs to be finished by June 17, 1894, when Earth will be at its most advantageously visible from Mars. That night Thayer and his team will light the petroleum, creating a huge flare that will "petition for man's membership in the fraternity of planetary civilizations." Thayer is utterly convinced that his audacious enterprise will attract the attention and admiration of his distant, alien colleagues. In "Equilateral," Kalfus, who was a National Book Award finalist for his previous novel, "A Disorder Peculiar to the Country," takes as his starting point the true story of late-19th-century astronomers who believed they had discovered elaborate artificial canal systems on Mars. Among them was the American Percival Lowell, who insisted that he had seen irrigation channels and seasonal color changes like the greening of fields. This was enough to convince him that the red planet was inhabited by intelligent beings. Kalfus cleverly moves from these historical facts to Thayer's brazen invented project, using them as steppingstones to tell the story of a spectacularly bold, obsessive and outrageously arrogant man. Thayer believes in the progress of science and mankind. Inspired by Darwin's "Origin of Species," he expects planets to evolve just as plants and animals do. Since Mars is an older planet than Earth, Thayer says, he hopes to learn from the Martians how to "assemble the social, spiritual and material resources necessary to survive a dehydrating planet." But while his great triangle in the desert has been conceived to "benefit the whole of humanity," regardless of nation and religion, it's been financed by the so-called Mars Concession, an international consortium of private shareholders and governments. Of course, there are problems. Thayer's workers are threatening to strike, limestone impedes the progress of the digging, men are killed, a factory manufacturing pitch for the trenches is seriously damaged, creating further delays. And Thayer himself is increasingly debilitated by fevers. There is another triangle in this story, which may take the idea a little too literally - one involving Thayer; his loyal and smart secretary, Miss Keaton; and an alluring Arab servant girl who speaks no English. Miss Keaton is an accomplished astronomer herself; she also runs much of the operation in the desert. She and Thayer have in the past been more than just colleagues, but as he falls deeper into the delirium caused by his illness, he becomes strangely - elusively, ultimately unconvincingly - attracted to the subservient servant girl. AT just over 200 pages, "Equilateral" sometimes feels too slender, its characters one-dimensional, leaving the reader with little emotional investment in Thayer and his companions. But Kalfus writes so well that his storytelling carries us along. Only rarely does his language become overdrawn, as when he points out the "lush lactic wash of the Milky Way" or notes that the servant girl is as "supple as a cat and as fecund as the Nile." Toward the end, though, Kalfus redeems "Equilateral" with some fine twists as the narrative becomes darker and more complex, evolving into a more intricate fable, an exploration of man's hubris. As the world awaits word from the Martians, Thayer's dream of intergalactic communication and the progress of science turns into an economic equation. A majestic customs house, 200 feet high and made of the finest Portland stone, adorned with soaring columns, is erected at one of the corners of the gigantic triangle, a fitting symbol of what this enterprise is really about: trade, exploitation, colonialism. When it is announced that Herr Krupp, Mr. Rockefeller and Baron Rothschild are expected to join the officials assembled in the desert, it becomes clear that Thayer has served his purpose. From now on, "men of business will have to take center stage." Miss Keaton's protest that "the Equilateral is meant to serve humanity" is the last reminder of what it had once signified. Meanwhile the Concession is waiting to cash in on its "monopoly on trade with Mars." Inspired by Darwin, the hero of Kalfuss novel believes that planets also evolve. Andrea Wulf's latest book is "Chasing Venus: The Race to Measure the Heavens." She is an Eccles British Library writer in residence for 2013.