“i remember circle at me first blood, ah. then i was young.”
Paul Kingsnorth, Alexandria, 2020
///
Alexandria could take place in a distant past, when humans lived in tiny groups, scrabbling for survival, or it could take place in a future after human-caused climate change has led to their own near-extinction. Either way, it is the story of a handful of humans, carving out lonely lives in the wilderness.
A religion of sorts has developed in this group, a series of beliefs where the human senses and the world are sacred. This small society celebrates the natural, not the supernatural.
A creature begins to haunt them, picking off members of their band one by one. This “red stalker” promises its victims an existence untethered from the natural world; it claims it can transform the humans into elevated beings, unencumbered by their physical bodies to Alexandria, a place the tribe has warned its members for generations to avoid at all costs.
Having previously read Kingsnorth’s “The Wake,” I was somewhat prepared for his unique writing style. Although Kingsnorth writes in more distinguishable English here, he retains his unique talent for transforming our language into something both familiar and alien.