Awake

Harald Voetmann''s eye-opening English debut, Awake, is the first book of his erudite and grotesque trilogy about humankind''s inhuman will to conquer natureIn a shuttered bedroom in ancient Italy, the sleepless Pliny the Elder lies in bed obsessively dictating new chapters of his Natural History to his slave Diocles. Wheezing, imperious, and prone to nosebleeds, Pliny doesn''t believe in spending...