The Bukowski Agency - The Golden Mean

Read an excerpt
See all author's titles
See also www.annabellyon.blogspot.com

75,000 words hardcover
Finished books available

RIGHTS SOLD

US: Knopf, Fall 2010
Canada: Random House, Fall 2009
Spain: Roca Editorial
France: Editions la Table Ronde
Brazilian Portuguese: Leya Brasil
UK: Atlantic Books
Portugal: Dom Quixote
Croatia: Sareni Ducan
Taiwan: Ye-Ren
Audio: Recorded Books
Turkey: Pegasus Yayinlari
Finland: BTJ
Holland: Ambo/Anthos

ABOUT ANNABEL LYON

Annabel Lyon (photo: Phillip Chin)
(Photo: Phillip Chin)

The Golden Mean is Annabel Lyon’s long-awaited first novel. Her story collection Oxygen (2000) and her collection of novellas, The Best Thing for You (2004) were published in Canada to wide acclaim. Annabel studied music, philosophy, and law before she decided to write full-time. She lives in Vancouver with her partner and two children.

The Golden Mean

by Annabel Lyon

IN THE FRANK, EARTHY, AND ENGAGING VOICE OF ARISTOTLE, THE GOLDEN MEAN BRINGS TO LIFE THE WORLD OF THE ANCIENT GREEK PHILOSOPHER

“This quietly ambitious and beautifully achieved novel is one of the most convincing historical novels I have ever read. Lyon makes her reader avid for every detail of this strange world, whether domestic or medical or military, and she has steeped herself in the thinking of the time. She makes her characters entirely solid and real, while respecting their otherness, the distance between us. That is what characterised Mary Renault’s novels, and I think that she would have deeply admired this book. [Lyon’s] judgment is sound and true, and the reader trusts her voice from the first paragraph.”  — HILARY MANTEL, winner of the 2009 Man Booker Prize for Fiction

“The Golden Mean is more than a brilliant and beautifully told novel: it’s also a profound exploration of moral and philosophical issues that have troubled and perplexed us since Aristotle.”  — RUSSELL BANKS

The Golden Mean coverIn 342 BC the philosopher Aristotle was persuaded by his former boyhood chum King Philip of Macedonia to serve as tutor to his son, the prince who has come to be known today as Alexander the Great. Along with his teenage wife and nephew, Aristotle remained in the court for seven years, during which time his ambition led him to participate in the ever-more-sinister intrigues of King Philip's warrior court. But Philip eventually lost interest in him and began to favour others, passing over Aristotle for promotion to more prestigious positions.

Prince Alexander, meanwhile, grew from a bright, affectionate boy to an increasingly powerful and ambitious young man, resentful of his father's bullying and womanizing. Aristotle tried to influence the prince in ethics and right conduct, but he soon realized that his teachings had grown twisted in the young man's mind.

Annabel Lyon's masterful prose brings us the intimate details of Aristotle's personality, including his sexuality and his curious malady. As a boy, Aristotle traveled with his doctor father and witnessed such things as caesareans performed without anesthetic and headaches cured by drilling holes in skulls. At the court, he becomes close to Alexander'sThe Golden Mean - US cover mentally challenged brother, whom he finds a personal challenge to teach. We discover how Aristotle achieved his groundbreaking anatomical drawings, and what happened on the day when his student showed up bearing a severed head.

Aristotle's disillusionment with his role in court reaches its nadir at the battle of Chaironea, where Philip's victory secures Macedonian dominion over a number of Greek states, including Athens. Afterwards Aristotle is still not granted a much-coveted foreign assignment, and he feels like a failure. When the king marries a younger wife, threatening to displace Alexander with a new heir, court politics quickly bring The Golden Mean to a murderous climax.

PRAISE FOR THE GOLDEN MEAN

“It takes chutzpah to make your main characters Aristotle and Alexander the Great, but Lyon pulls it off; she has the gift of finding the pulse of the ancient world and bringing it back to glorious life … gripping, with a powerful sense of time and place.”  — THE TIMES, London

“A cornucopia of vivid impressions of the ancient world. Upon finishing the novel, I was struck by a feeling of emptiness, loath to close the door on Lyon’s time machine.”  — THE TIMES, London

“[A] story that gives us the classical world with everyday liveliness and narrative force … a graceful fusion of effective narrative and colloquial language … splendidly intelligent and entertaining.”  — NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO

“Lyon... brings 4th-century Greece to startling life [and] richly imagines Aristotle's stint as Macedon's royal academician, who gave Alexander the intellectual tools to not only rule but to civilize.”  — PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

“The harsh light of the classical world is prone to bleach away all humanity and leave only the bare outline of myth. Not so in Annabel Lyon’s The Golden Mean, in which Aristotle is haunted by agonies of the flesh and spirit, and Alexander, his most famous pupil, struggles to be Olympian despite a murderous nature and merely human powers. We witness their brilliance emerging through their pain and ignorance.”  — ZACHARY MASON, author of The Lost Books of the Odyssey

“Within the pages of The Golden Mean the dusty dead are resurrected. Annabel Lyon brings Aristotle—flawed and brilliant and, unexpectedly, human—back into the world. An exhilarating reminder that we are not very far from history. Lyon is an extremely gifted writer.”  — STEPHEN GALLOWAY, author of The Cellist of Sarajevo

“Few writers would dare to employ Aristotle as their narrator but Annabel Lyon has done exactly this in her extraordinary novel The Golden Mean. In thoughtful and controlled prose that never fails to grip, Lyon presents an unexpected portrait of the young Alexander the Great, a fascinating recreation of Plato’s Academy and brings the ancient world back to life with a splendour I haven’t seen since I, Claudius. A triumph of erudition and story-telling.”  — JOHN BOYNE, author of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

“Historical fiction at its best. Whether posing the eternally relevant question of what it means to live a virtuous life, detailing the gory details of an ancient battle scene or probing the relationship between master and student, Lyon authoritatively evokes a fabled time and place in the urbane and dry voice of the man judged the smartest of his age.”  — MONTREAL GAZETTE

“This historical novel adds a refreshingly human dimension to ancient Greek civilization and the world-changing ideas that it produced.”  — WINNIPEG FREE PRESS

“Lyon must be applauded for a daring and challenging approach to fiction”  — EDMONTON JOURNAL

“...a taut, polished novel that will hold your attention from start to finish. It is at times funny, thought-provoking, sensual and suspenseful.”  — EDMONTON JOURNAL

“[An] audacious attempt to create a flesh and blood Aristotle, with intimate glances into his psyche...”  — NATIONAL POST

“[A] crisply written, painstakingly researched book, and Lyon ably inhabits ‘the greatest mind of all time’.”  — THE GLOBE AND MAIL

“I absolutely loved The Golden Mean. Annabel Lyon brings the philosophers and warriors, artists and whores, princes and slaves of ancient Macedonia alive, with warmth, wit and poignancy. Impeccably researched and brilliantly told, this novel is utterly convincing.”  — MARIE PHILLIPS, author of Gods Behaving Badly

“An exhilarating book, both brilliant and profound. Annabel Lyon’s spare, fluid, utterly convincing prose pulls us headlong into Aristotle’s original mind. Only Lyon’s great-hearted intelligence could have imagined and achieved the brave ambition of this book. Vital, ferocious and true, The Golden Mean is an oracular vision of the past made present.”  — MARINA ENDICOTT, author of Good to a Fault

“The Golden Mean, so full of intellect, is a pleasure to read. If excellence is our standard, then this novel will certainly flourish.”  — DAVID BERGEN, Giller-winning author of The Time in Between

“In Lyon’s clever hands, more than two thousand years of difference are made to disappear and Aristotle feels as real and accessible as the man next door. With this powerful, readable act of the imagination. Lyon proves that she can go anywhere it pleases her to go.”  — FRED STENSON , author of The Great Karoo

 

 

Back to top