Declare: A Novel

There are histories beneath history. Tim Powers, one of the most brilliant and audacious talents in contemporary fiction, casts an eerie light on the terrible events that made the twentieth century and reveals what the Cold War was really about.DeclareAfter a ten-year hiatus, British academic Andrew Hale is abruptly called back into the Great Game by a terse, cryptic telephone message. Born to "the trade" and recruited at the age of seven by a most secret Secret Service, Hale, in 1963, is forced to confront again the nightmare that has haunted his adult life: a lethal unfinished operation code-named Declare.Two decades earlier, as a young double agent infiltrating the Soviet spy network in Nazi-occupied Paris, Hale first encountered the incomprehensible rhythms of an invisible world. And from that moment on nothing was ever safe and knowable again. There also, his life became eternally linked with two others' lives that would recurrently intersect his at its most dangerous junctures: his "comrade operative," the fiery and beautiful Communist agent Elena Teresa Ceniza-Bendiga, the object of Hale's undying love, and Kim Philby, the mysterious traitor to the British cause...and perhaps to all humanity. Together they form an unlikely trimuvirate with one shared destiny: Declare.But the Great Game is greater and far more terrible than Andrew Hale ever imagined. There is another, larger war raging unseen all around him, a cataclysmic secret conflict masked by a "Cold War" of national ideologies. And it is drawing Hale, Elena, and Philby inexorably toward world-shattering consequences on a Biblical mountain in the Middle East...and to a hideous feast of broken minds, destroyed lives, and devoured souls.The remarkable imagination of Tim Powers has wedded John le Carré with Clive Barker to create something unlike anything previously contained between book covers. A sweeping epic adventure, a love story, a revelation, a nightmare, it is our past and our world as something other...Declare!

Amazon.com Review

This supernatural suspense thriller crosses several genres--espionage, geopolitics, religion, fantasy. But like the chicken crossing the road, it takes quite a while to get to the other side. En route, Tim Powers covers a lot of territory: Turkey, Armenia, the Saudi Arabian desert, Beirut, London, Paris, Berlin, and Moscow. Andrew Hale, an Oxford lecturer who first entered Her Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service as an 18-year-old schoolboy, is called back to finish a job that culminated in a deadly mission on Mount Ararat after the end of World War II. Now it's 1963, and cold war politics are behind the decision to activate Hale for another attempt to complete Operation Declare and bring down the Communist government before Moscow can harness the powerful, other-worldly forces concentrated on the summit of the mountain, supposed site of the landing of Noah's ark. James Theodora is the über-spymaster whose internecine rivalry with other branches of the Secret Intelligence Service traps Hale between a rock and a hard place, literally and figuratively. There's plenty of mountain and desert survival stuff here, a plethora of geopolitical and theological history, and a big serving of A Thousand and One Nights, which is Hale's guide to the meteorites, drogue stones, and amonon plant, which figure in this complicated tale. There's a love story, too, and a bizarre twist on the Kim Philby legend that posits both Philby and Hale as the only humans who can tame the powers of the djinns who populate Mount Ararat. This is an easy book to get lost in, and Powers's many fans will have a field day with it. The rest of us may have a harder time. --Jane Adams

From Publishers Weekly

Powers (The Anubis Gates, etc.), known hitherto as an expert fantasy writer, has created a mind-bending mix of genres here, placing his gifts for extreme speculative fiction in service of a fantastical spy story involving rivalries between no fewer than four intelligence services: British, French, Russian and American. In 1963, Andrew Hale is summoned to reenter the secret service. He has a past embracing anti-Nazi activities in Occupied ParisAwhere he fell in love with Elena, a Spanish-born Communist operativeAand a spectacularly unsuccessful mission on Mount Ararat in 1948, the purpose of which only gradually becomes clear. Powers posits that the mountain, as the speculative last home of Noah's Ark, is also the dwelling place of many djinns, supernatural beings that often take the form of rocks in the Arabian deserts. The father of British spy Kim Philby, a noted Arabist, had been a keen observer of these phenomena and taught his son about them. Now it seems that a supernatural power, manifesting itself as an old woman, is safeguarding the Soviet Union, and if fragments of a destroyed djinn can be introduced into Moscow, they could destroy her protection and make the Soviet Union susceptible to normal human laws. This is Hale's mission. In 1948 it failed, and most of his commando force was destroyed. On his return 15 years later, with Philby, Hale succeeds in shooting fragments of djinn into Philby, who then returns to Moscow. Upon Philby's death many years later, the Soviet Union duly collapses. The styles of spy fiction, with dense counterplotting and extremes of caution, and the spectacular supernatural scenes simply do not blend. It's all offbeat and daringly imaginative, but ultimately rather foolish entertainment. (Jan. 9) Forecast: This original novel, despite its strengths, is unlikely to satisfy fully fans of either spycraft or fantasyAand such is the pitfall of genre-bending. A 6-city author tour plus vigorous promotion online and off could give the book some turbo power, though. Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From The New Yorker

Powers's fans follow him from book to book on the justified assumption that his fantastic imagination will always run ahead of theirs and provide surprise and suspense in abundance. His latest novel, which unfolds in the world of twentieth-century espionage, places malevolent supernatural forces in the service of the Cold War. Powers creates an appallingly life-like portrait of the British traitor Kim Philby, and he orchestrates reality and fantasy so artfully that the reader is not allowed a moment's doubt throughout this tall tale. Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

Dean Koontz

“Dazzling . . . a tour de force, a brilliant blend of John le Carre spy fiction with the otherworldly.”

Kirkus Starred Review

“There’s never been a novel quite like DECLARE…one of the protean Powers’s most absorbing and rewarding creations.”

San Francisco Chronicle

“Highly ingenious . . . No one else writes like Powers, and Declare finds him at the top of his game.”

Locus Magazine

“DECLARE is classic Tim Powers, his best novel since Last Call, and possibly his best to date.”

William Gibson

“Tim Powers is a brilliant writer. Declare’s occult subtext for the deeper Cold War is wonderfully original and brilliantly imagined.”

From the Back Cover

There are histories beneath history. Tim Powers, one of the most brilliant and audacious talents in contemporary fiction, casts an eerie light on the terrible events that made the twentieth century and reveals what the Cold War was really about.DeclareAfter a ten-year hiatus, British academic Andrew Hale is abruptly called back into the Great Game by a terse, cryptic telephone message. Born to "the trade" and recruited at the age of seven by a most secret Secret Service, Hale, in 1963, is forced to confront again the nightmare that has haunted his adult life: a lethal unfinished operation code-named Declare.Two decades earlier, as a young double agent infiltrating the Soviet spy network in Nazi-occupied Paris, Hale first encountered the incomprehensible rhythms of an invisible world. And from that moment on nothing was ever safe and knowable again. There also, his life became eternally linked with two others' lives that would recurrently intersect his at its most dangerous junctures: his "comrade operative," the fiery and beautiful Communist agent Elena Teresa Ceniza-Bendiga, the object of Hale's undying love, and Kim Philby, the mysterious traitor to the British cause...and perhaps to all humanity. Together they form an unlikely trimuvirate with one shared destiny: Declare.But the Great Game is greater and far more terrible than Andrew Hale ever imagined. There is another, larger war raging unseen all around him, a cataclysmic secret conflict masked by a "Cold War" of national ideologies. And it is drawing Hale, Elena, and Philby inexorably toward world-shattering consequences on a Biblical mountain in the Middle East...and to a hideous feast of broken minds, destroyed lives, and devoured souls.The remarkable imagination of Tim Powers has wedded John le Carré with Clive Barker to create something unlike anything previously contained between book covers. A sweeping epic adventure, a love story, a revelation, a nightmare, it is our past and our world as something other...Declare!

About the Author

Tim Powers is the author of numerous novels including Hide Me Among the Graves, Three Days to Never, Declare, Last Call, and On Stranger Tides, which inspired the feature film Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. He has won the Philip K. Dick Memorial Award twice, and the World Fantasy Award three times. He lives in San Bernardino, California.

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