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Xerxes
A rich and unsettling novel about storytelling, evil and fakery. On the heels of Jonathan Buckley's marvellously assured debut -- 'multilayered and captivating, ' Daily Telegraph; 'A spontaneous and searching picture of a life, ' IoS -- comes his dazzling second novel. Set in Germany in the 1820s, Ettlinger, a young scholar who has been commissioned to design and build a chapel, finds himself increasingly swept up in a circle of friends who regularly meet to joust and outwit each other with stories. At the same time he receives from Wolgast, a local collector of antiques, an invitation to use his library to assist him in his research. But over the coming weeks, Wolgast's hand of friendship seems increasingly sinister and poisonous, his house more an anteroom in Hell. Threaded with the story of the kingdom of Xerxes, a cautionary tale about a paradise lost, Xerxes is a tense and frightening read, a brilliant examination of manipulative men and the shadow they cas
Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
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About the author
Jonathan Buckley
76 books50 followersJonathan Buckley was born in Birmingham, grew up in Dudley, and studied English Literature at Sussex University, where he stayed on to take an MA. From there he moved to King’s College, London, where he researched the work of the Scottish poet/artist Ian Hamilton Finlay. After working as a university tutor, stage hand, maker of theatrical sets and props, bookshop manager, decorator and builder, he was commissioned in 1987 to write the Rough Guide to Venice & the Veneto.
He went on to become an editorial director at Rough Guides, and to write further guidebooks on Tuscany & Umbria and Florence, as well as contributing to the Rough Guide to Classical Music and Rough Guide to Opera.
His first novel, The Biography of Thomas Lang, was published by Fourth Estate in 1997. It was followed by Xerxes (1999), Ghost MacIndoe (2001), Invisible (2004), So He Takes The Dog (2006), Contact (2010) and Telescope (2011). His eighth novel, Nostalgia, was published in 2013.
From 2003 to 2005 he held a Royal Literary Fund fellowship at the University of Sussex, and from 2007 to 2011 was an Advisory Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund, for whom he convenes a reading group in Brighton.
He went on to become an editorial director at Rough Guides, and to write further guidebooks on Tuscany & Umbria and Florence, as well as contributing to the Rough Guide to Classical Music and Rough Guide to Opera.
His first novel, The Biography of Thomas Lang, was published by Fourth Estate in 1997. It was followed by Xerxes (1999), Ghost MacIndoe (2001), Invisible (2004), So He Takes The Dog (2006), Contact (2010) and Telescope (2011). His eighth novel, Nostalgia, was published in 2013.
From 2003 to 2005 he held a Royal Literary Fund fellowship at the University of Sussex, and from 2007 to 2011 was an Advisory Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund, for whom he convenes a reading group in Brighton.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 20, 2025
The manner of its elegant, rich, and luscious prose gives a touch of the eighteenth century to this engaging yet disquieting book. Think of ‘A Draughtsman's Contract’, ‘Barry Lyndon’, and ‘Les liaisons dangereuses’, with just a little bit of Edgar Allen Poe; yet Jonathan Buckley tells not one but two distinctive stories from separate eras, not only Hanoverian Germany but also the pre-Christian Persian Achaemenid empire of Xerxes.
Buckley writes with precision about a Hanoverian salon; a well-studied account of a manipulative friendship between its Svengali and principal inspiration, von Wolgast (a libertarian with peculiar habits), and Ettlinger (a young architect in love with the salon’s muse). It ends in tragedy and unrequited love. Oh, misfortune heaped upon disaster! Then, with gracefulness, he also interweaves (in alternating sections) a Persian tale, describing much of Xerxes’s enlightened empire. No gracious detail or regal nicety is spared. Writing about the small chambers of the menagerie, maintained to amuse the emperor Xerxes’s wives, Buckley says:
’This one, open to the sky, was the home of the sloth; it slept all day, slinging its body like a hammock from the rafters. Next to it, behind a grille of iron, lived the mandrill, a dog faced monkey with chisel teeth and blue-chevroned snout. In this rectangle lived the scaly pangolin, which, when frightened, would curl itself up to make its body a nautilus shell. Artaynte kept a lyre-bird, a crested lizard and a porcupine, but her favorite was a tamarin monkey, an homunculus with a fidgeting mouth, a plume of white hair, and feverish eyes. Cassandane’s pets were a squirrel that had been taught to fetch a chalcedony from her casket of jewels, and a silken-coated black bear that had been trained to strum a harp.’
And serving the emperor himself with a bestiary of strange creatures, the bestiarist is a, ‘… chronicler or creator of a host of creatures: the animal with its eyes in its mouth; the goat covered with scales instead of hair; the lizard with a gland under its brain which, when the head is cut off, hardens and becomes a jewel; the dog that lives underground, and can be heard at night howling for the light; the snake with flesh that turns to blood in the instant its skin is removed; the animal that has skin too tight for its muscles, which are constantly bursting through its bristly hide… ‘, and so on, until the fabulous ‘… lizard that from its third year diminishes in size until it becomes so small that nobody can be sure if the animal ever dies.’ This mythical and lyrical quality is in contrast to the taut pedantry and formalism of von Wolgast's and Ettlinger's camraderie, that echos the protocols and etiquette of early 19th-century Germanic life. The two visit a church, and in a moment of quixotic self-reflection, Ettlinger says to the Machiavellian von Wolgast:
’The notion came to me that perhaps I was guilty of something I’d dreamed of doing, and had forgotten when I awoke. Perhaps, I speculated, people were sometimes given an intuition of their lives as finished things, as objects viewed from the vantage of eternity, and I was feeling remorse for something I had not yet done?’ While his supposed mentor and patron (Ettlinger is to design his house) advises, ‘Churches invite us to indulge our appetite for confession. I suspect that they may create that appetite. I have often thought that what we take to be effects are, on the contrary, causes. And vice versa, of course… ‘
Buckley skillfully weaves a unique narrative from both strands of the book; a fantasy and a psychological thriller, ensuring their relevance to each other is subtly signposted yet curiously tenuous. Ultimately, the barbarity that links them both is apparent at the denouement. As the Persian Empire falls, von Wolgast faces his terrible destiny. Its destruction is a metaphor for the libertine’s downfall. All of Wolgast’s desires and eccentricities are for nothing; Ettlinger remains empty-handed, while Xerxes’s meritocracy and wealth disappear. This is quite an enigmatic book, full of speculation and invention with a sumptuous poeticism, that will keep you thinking beyond the final page.
Highly recommended.
Buckley writes with precision about a Hanoverian salon; a well-studied account of a manipulative friendship between its Svengali and principal inspiration, von Wolgast (a libertarian with peculiar habits), and Ettlinger (a young architect in love with the salon’s muse). It ends in tragedy and unrequited love. Oh, misfortune heaped upon disaster! Then, with gracefulness, he also interweaves (in alternating sections) a Persian tale, describing much of Xerxes’s enlightened empire. No gracious detail or regal nicety is spared. Writing about the small chambers of the menagerie, maintained to amuse the emperor Xerxes’s wives, Buckley says:
’This one, open to the sky, was the home of the sloth; it slept all day, slinging its body like a hammock from the rafters. Next to it, behind a grille of iron, lived the mandrill, a dog faced monkey with chisel teeth and blue-chevroned snout. In this rectangle lived the scaly pangolin, which, when frightened, would curl itself up to make its body a nautilus shell. Artaynte kept a lyre-bird, a crested lizard and a porcupine, but her favorite was a tamarin monkey, an homunculus with a fidgeting mouth, a plume of white hair, and feverish eyes. Cassandane’s pets were a squirrel that had been taught to fetch a chalcedony from her casket of jewels, and a silken-coated black bear that had been trained to strum a harp.’
And serving the emperor himself with a bestiary of strange creatures, the bestiarist is a, ‘… chronicler or creator of a host of creatures: the animal with its eyes in its mouth; the goat covered with scales instead of hair; the lizard with a gland under its brain which, when the head is cut off, hardens and becomes a jewel; the dog that lives underground, and can be heard at night howling for the light; the snake with flesh that turns to blood in the instant its skin is removed; the animal that has skin too tight for its muscles, which are constantly bursting through its bristly hide… ‘, and so on, until the fabulous ‘… lizard that from its third year diminishes in size until it becomes so small that nobody can be sure if the animal ever dies.’ This mythical and lyrical quality is in contrast to the taut pedantry and formalism of von Wolgast's and Ettlinger's camraderie, that echos the protocols and etiquette of early 19th-century Germanic life. The two visit a church, and in a moment of quixotic self-reflection, Ettlinger says to the Machiavellian von Wolgast:
’The notion came to me that perhaps I was guilty of something I’d dreamed of doing, and had forgotten when I awoke. Perhaps, I speculated, people were sometimes given an intuition of their lives as finished things, as objects viewed from the vantage of eternity, and I was feeling remorse for something I had not yet done?’ While his supposed mentor and patron (Ettlinger is to design his house) advises, ‘Churches invite us to indulge our appetite for confession. I suspect that they may create that appetite. I have often thought that what we take to be effects are, on the contrary, causes. And vice versa, of course… ‘
Buckley skillfully weaves a unique narrative from both strands of the book; a fantasy and a psychological thriller, ensuring their relevance to each other is subtly signposted yet curiously tenuous. Ultimately, the barbarity that links them both is apparent at the denouement. As the Persian Empire falls, von Wolgast faces his terrible destiny. Its destruction is a metaphor for the libertine’s downfall. All of Wolgast’s desires and eccentricities are for nothing; Ettlinger remains empty-handed, while Xerxes’s meritocracy and wealth disappear. This is quite an enigmatic book, full of speculation and invention with a sumptuous poeticism, that will keep you thinking beyond the final page.
Highly recommended.
July 19, 2021
A book you must have patience with, as well as a dictionary by your side. Great visualisations though.
August 2, 2011
A waste of time.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews