Review: "The Second Sleep," Robert Harris

 By Paul Carrier 

At first blush, The Second Sleep appears to be historical fiction. Christopher Fairfax, a young, intellectually curious priest from the English cathedral city of Exeter, travels by horseback to the hamlet of Addicott St. George in 1468 to bury Father Lacy, a recently deceased clergyman.

But all is not as it seems. When Fairfax spots the sturdy village church for the first time, he speculates that it might be 1,500 years old, which is patently impossible in the 15th century. What gives? It turns out this is not “our” 1468. It is the future.

Society as we know it collapsed in 2025, possibly due to cyber warfare, ushering in a “dark age” and the medieval-like period of The Second Sleep. A despotic church that views science and the study of “the ancients” (i.e., us) as heretical has assumed control. Its post-apocalyptic numbering system begins with the year 666, the “number of the beast” from the Bible’s Book of Revelation. So the fact that it is 1468 when the novel opens means some 800 years have passed since the demise of civilization in the 21st century.

Was Lacy murdered for his “heretical” interests? Can Fairfax and an obsessive scholar evade the iron thumb of the church and uncover more of the forbidden past? Perhaps Harris’ dystopian vision of the future should provide food for thought in our own time.