The Eddan Collective

by Joanna Demers

In the year 2016, one Annika Trent, scholar of the late Roman Empire, founds the Eddan Collective, a group of Marxist faculty planning for the imminent collapse of American society. Annika’s memoir details her struggles with her Eddan collaborators, her chronic illness, and her ability to “send herself away” to fifth-century North Africa, where she converses with St. Augustine of Hippo. As her control over the Collective erodes, Annika unwittingly facilitates the elimination of the Humanities, first from her own institution, then in universities across North America. But her time-travel “conversations” with St. Augustine lead her in due course to abandon her quest for secular remedies, and like Augustine, she undergoes conversion. The Eddan Collective is a campus novel, a prophecy of the university in the near future, and perhaps most of all a reflection on intellectual pride and spiritual humility.

210 pages, Paperback

Published October 1, 2023