Flow Down Like Silver: Hypatia of Alexandria: 1 [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

This is a lyrical telling of the story of nearly forgotten Hypatia - a giant of antiquity so shunted aside by the 'flaw' of her gender and the antagonism of the Catholic Church that little has remained of her life's work beyond the lurid cruelty of her death at the hands of the fledgling Church threatened by her wisdom and erudition #doubt me, then be alerted that the Catholic Church has tried to stop the new movie on Hypatia to be shown in Italy#. Author Ki Longfellow, like a forensic anthropologist, has skillfully added color and flesh back to the few remaining bones of history to create a spellbinding novel of a very alive woman.

Those familiar with the history and those fresh from viewing the new movie Agora starring Rachel Weisz will be all to aware of the impending ending as they read this novel; though the author does an excellent job in allowing us to forget and be swept up in Hypatia's soaring thoughts as she juggles philosophy with mathematics and then matters of faith as she seeks to answer the timeless questions of "who are we?" and "what does it all mean?" There is plenty here, too, for the historical reader as Hypatia was a woman of many talents living through a very turbulent era in human history. There is romance, action, and drama.

Scenes that stand out in my mind because of the intensity of the writing include a fascinating depiction of the terrifying rigors of ancient surgery, Hypatia's battles with bandits, the burning of the Library of Alexandria, as well as an incredibly beautifully written storm at sea where Longfellow authoritatively evokes the art of sailing within the eye of the storm.

I suppose my biggest criticism of the novel is that it seems too short. I wish I had been able to spend more time in Hypatia's world, looking through her eyes.

After reading the engrossing "The Secret Magdalene", I couldn't wait to read Longfellow's second book in this unusual trilogy, Hypatia of Alexandria". Hypatia was one of the world's brilliant forgotten women. She was a mathematician, the most famous and influential philosopher of her day, a cosmologist, alchemist, and the last of the great mystery Alexandrian teachers just as Christianity was sweeping through the Roman world forbidding all that Hypatia believed in, taught and did. She was a woman of beauty and sensuality and courage. She stood her ground when the "faithful" came calling for her in the guise of Cyril, the new Bishop of Alexandria.

This is a beautifully written story (just as "The Secret Magdalene" is) but it's an easier read. That's not to say the first book was hard, it's just good timeless literature, not a Harlequin novel you take to the beach. I'm hooked now and looking forward to reading her third book in this exciting trilogy. Highly recommended to those who love good books.

I have just finished reading this book - much too soon! Like its subject, the mathematician, astronomer and philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria, it beguiles at first with its brilliance and high drama, then demands the attention of the mind, the understanding of the heart, and finally, it touches the soul, with mingled pain and discovery, and the glimpse of something precious - a vision of gnosis, if not its experience. Longfellow's characterization is in the heroic rather than realistic style - all her characters are larger than life, higher, lower, etched like Egyptian tomb drawings (for the "higher") and newspaper caricatures (for the "lower"), and hits with as much impact. She weaves together public and private history, the dying years of an extraordinary civilization, city and woman; and the intellectual, emotional and spiritual struggles that all who lived through that time went through. Above all, she recreates - part imagination, part spiritual understanding, part historical reconstruction - the intimate path to Light of a woman who rose to be a public figure more feted than some of the greatest men of her time, friend to exceptional minds, Christian, Jew and Pagan, during a period when tolerance died and a single, overwhelming, fanatical version of a single belief system arose and plunged the Mediterranean world in darkness for centuries.

The parallels with our own century, when questioning and intelligence are so widely devalued and opposed with powerful and violent stupidity (not least by the Catholic Church, who want to stop people from seeing a recent film of Hypatia's life and death, Agora), are not a coincidence. But for all that, the culmination of the novel is not a rant or a lament, but Hypatia's gnosis, a mirror of Innana's descent and rebirth. Though Hypatia's ending is well known - tragically better than her works and life - in coming after such a stellar experience as her personal discovery of the divine, it seems to concern more the world she loved, and which was dying with her, than Hypatia herself: the ultimate symbol of the victory of fanaticism over intelligence, compassion or even good sense. Hypatia herself died a free and accomplished woman.