The Syme Papers

by Benjamin Markovits

Douglas Pitt is a man obsessed. His quest is to prove that the 18th-century inventor Samuel Highgate Syme discovered the theory of continental drift. Laughed at and dismissed at every turn, Pitt's luck changes when he discovers a contemporary manuscript written by a scientist, Friedrich Muller, which recounts a year in the company of the irrepressible Syme. Perhaps this will finally reveal his genius...

Genres: Fiction, Novels

Paperback

First published March 19, 2004

About the author

Benjamin Markovits (born 1973) is a British-American writer. He is the author of twelve novels, among them a trilogy on the life of poet Lord Byron. Markovits was selected as one of the Best of Young British Novelists by Granta magazine in 2013. In 2016, his novel You Don't Have To Live Like This won the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction. In 2025, his novel The Rest of Our Lives was shortlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize

Born in 1973 in California, United States, Ben Markovits grew up in Texas, London and Berlin, and studied at Yale University and the University of Oxford. He has worked as a high-school English teacher and as the editor of a left-wing culture magazine. After college, he played professional basketball in Landshut, Germany, for a team in the southern league of the German second division.

Markovits now lives in London, England, where he teaches creative writing at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Reviews

[Robert Wechsler]

Benjamin Markovits is brilliant and he doesn’t show off his brilliance quite like most young writers, although he certainly is a show off. This debut novel is an anthology of forms and voices, and Markovits makes the great majority of them work, even though he's tried the common form of historical figure being researched by a quirky young man of our own time. It’s a marvel. The form I liked the least was the faux 19th-century novel in the voice of a young German geologist who comes to America; so many writers do this that it came across as stale.

But alas, this novel has some negatives, the biggest of which is the small, light italics used for the German geologist’s journal, the most italics I’ve ever seen in a book. It undermined the reading experience for me. As did the fact that the novel went on too long; I found most of the last 100 pages flat and dull. But I recommend the first 400 pages of this singular debut.

Here's a taste of Markovits' prose:
"What struck me most forcefully, in the fields of Ruth's penmanship, was how much like fields they appeared: the grasses of her alphabet swaying in the soft breath of her eloquence, always forward, a little forward, as she thought of a new thing to write. Trees and hedgerows grew where a date stood out; names occasionally appeared in capitals, alongside the titles of plays attended, and, as we soon discovered, performed. Little hills rose when she was drunk, I believe; large letters gave scope to her wandering hand, to slip and find its course after all, and a few lines filled the page, and comforted her with the thought that a day had not passed by unreflected upon."

[Commander Law]

Had to give up on this rather wordy tome.

[Highlyeccentric]

This was an infuriating book. I wanted to sympathise with the protagonist, a strugging historian with writers' block on a collision course with academic failure. But I couldn't, because he was a dick and he deserved to fail and his wife should've bloody well left him years ago.

So I kept reading for the alt-history which Our Protagonist was researching. Markovits has invented, and inserted into the history of geological research, a character named Sam Syme, a university dropout who may have come up with - embedded in a completely mad scheme of a hollow earth - the idea of continental drift. Markovits' work here, retelling the history of "geognosy" and weaving his character into it, is fascinating. And I really fell for it when another character, a German aristocrat with some background in geology sent by his father to investigate the prospect of funding this mad Syme creature, showed up. Muller I loved: a dandy, a loner, strangely in love with Syme but nevertheless unconvinced by his theories. So I kept reading for Muller, in the hope that Muller might achieve some kind of interesting character development. And he did, to some degree, but he never told Syme that Syme was a dick and also completely bonkers about geology. That was aggravating.

By the end of it, ALL the characters, including the historian's wife and Muller and EVERYONE annoyed me.

[Cliff]

It is difficult to know what to write about these 591 pages of closely set 10 point. It tells of a history researcher researching the papers of the title in the hope that it will make his academic name and enable him to obtain tenure. Half of the book is taken up with a journal he discovers written by a German associate of the said Syme - all set in italics. I'm not sure whether the book is meant as a comment on the narrowness of much academic research when something not researched by another has to be found. Or is it a reflection of how scientific knowledge changes. Syme's belief that the earth is constructed of a number of nested concentric spheres separated by 'fluvia' wouldn't get room today on the most outlandish web forum. Or is it a homosexual love story? The 19th century manuscript implies this but skates round the subject, the author of the book catching the tone of such extremely well. I'm not sure if I really enjoyed the book - but I felt it deserved being read to the end, despite wanting to throw the towel in on several occasions!

[Annji]

Liked it but at times it felt disingenuous. "Don't try so hard to be clever!" was shouted at this book on several occasions.

[Roswitha Muntiyarso]

Just got this book from some bargain bookstore near British Museum. Need something to accompany me to wake up while stay up whole night in Heathrow airport for the morning flight to Istanbul :D