The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation. Volume I: The Pox Party

M T Anderson

Here is a book that defies description. I’ll give it a go anyway.

Octavian is a young African boy who lives with his mother in a house populated by American scientists known only by numbers. He is clothed in silks and given the very best of classical educations. Everything he does – what he learns, what he eats, how much he excretes – is meticulously documented.

Of course this scientific utopia cannot last. The scientists are confronted with financial difficulties. Octavian’s mother endangers their favoured situation. Boston fills with soldiers for the Revolutionary War. Disease outwits science, and Octavian finds himself a failure, and alone.

In telling his own story, Octavian starts out like the scientists around him – factual, cool, passive. But as things start to spiral out of control, his words become more impassioned. When his mother is struck with the pox, whole pages of text are scribbled out, as if Octavian couldn’t bear to see his mother’s suffering recorded.

This is not an easy read. The book is dense, complex and intricate. But readers who are willing to make the effort will definitely be rewarded.