Tuesday 8 January 2008

2008: Year of the Voynich!

Two interesting Voynich news stories...

Firstly, I've had a blog comment and some emails from a pleasantly surprised Enrique Joven, author of "El castello de las estrellas" (his blog is here): his big news is the book has been picked up by HarperCollins US, and is due for publication in September 2008 under the title "The castle of the stars". According to one Internet site, Enrique received a low six-figure advance ("$100,000 to $300,000). I'm very much looking forward to it! :-)

Secondly, another Voynich novel is on its way... and it could well be a big one.Its author is Michael Cordy, writer of the international bestsellers "The Messiah Code", "The Lucifer Code", "Crime Zero", and "The Venus Conspiracy". His next book (ISBN10 055215699X, ISBN13 9780552156998, AKA "Untitled Michael Cordy") is due for hardback release in "January 2008" from Transworld Publishers. The original title was "The Garden Of God", meaning Eden, though (curiously enough) it is also what "Baghdad" originally meant. What are the odds Transworld end up giving it the title "The Eden Code" instead?

The synopsis of the Michael Cordy book is here: basically, the main character's beautiful wife Lauren decodes the Voynich Manuscript, but ends up in a coma after someone tries to steal her translation, and so the main character ends up racing against a fanatical priest to reach the mythical "Jardin del Dios"...

I'm already getting a bit sick of these Jesuits and mysterious meddling priests (particularly as the Jesuit order didn't start up until many decades after the VMs was probably written), but hey - novelists have to start somewhere, right? [Also: I couldn't help but be reminded not a little of Thierry Maugenest's 2005 novel "Manuscrit MS 408", where two academics decoding the Voynich mysteriously fall into a coma, setting the story in motion...]

Whatever you think of Voynich novels, these are two potentially big novels with our favourite manuscript in a starring role, both due for release by Serie A mega-publishers this year. Perhaps I'm misreading the tea-leaves, but I do get the overwhelming feeling from this that 2008 is somehow destined to be the "Year of the Voynich" - not necessarily the year when it gets solved, but the year when it goes fully mainstream.

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