Given Cambridge’s historic and architectural richness, as well as the high turnover of characters to have passed through the University, it is unsurprising that it has frequently appealed to novelists. You can go back as far as Chaucer’s The Reeve’s Tale for fiction which touches on the University, but things in Cambridge have changed more since the 14th century than some fellows will let on. Probably the most important ‘Cambridge novel’ is The Longest Journey, a bildungsroman by E.M. Forster in which the protagonist’s debilitating clubfoot has been seen as a metaphor for Forster’s own struggle with his homosexuality. Malcolm Bradbury adapted Tom Sharpe’s hilarious Porterhouse Blue for TV, and both the series and the book should be on every fresher’s to-do list.

Now Jonathan Levi, who co-founded the literary magazine Granta as a Cambridge graduate student in the 1970s, offers Septimania as the latest in the line of Cambridge-centric novels. The story follows Malory, an organ scholar at Trinity who is quickly failing his PhD on the work of Isaac Newton. In the steeple of a small church, Malory encounters Louiza, a dyslexic maths genius who, on the day she inevitably falls in love with Malory, has submitted her own thesis which is set to have an impact of Newtonian standards. The lovers are quickly ‘discovered’ in quite different circumstances: Louiza is offered a well-paid position solving mathematical problems for a shady American organisation which insists on her isolation; meanwhile, Malory is informed that he is the heir to a mysterious inheritance, one which he must travel to Rome to come into. Kicked out of Cambridge and unable to find Louiza, despite the help of Antonella (a charming Italian mathematician whom one can’t help but feel sorry for, for much of the book), Malory soon departs for Rome to learn more about his birth right. 

In a Rome that, as a resident, Levi knowledgeably brings to the page, Malory is informed that he is to become King of Septimania, a region of southern France which was granted to his ancestry by a young Charlemagne. This patrimony grants him wealth, a Roman mansion complete with seemingly indentured servants, and, among other things, the privilege to choose the next pope. From this fast-paced starting point, the book embarks on a time-warping journey as Malory attempts to rescue the abducted Louiza, while at the same time uncovering the mysteries of Septimania – something which inextricably links him with Isaac Newton and the uncovering of a universal theory that has the potential to provide the answers to all the questions ever posed by religion or reason. 

Reviewers often attempt to note the tone of books. In the case of Septimania, ‘note’ and ‘tone’ are especially appropriate terms as the author is masterful in his depictions of the musical. Whether it be the protagonist’s organ-playing or the sounds of 1970s Cambridge garden parties (apparently heavy on Bob Dylan), the reader cannot help but be transported into this story via the sounds depicted on the page.

Perhaps what will appeal most to Varsity readers are the depictions of Cambridge and Newton’s centrality to an often complex but highly enjoyable storyline. Septimania offers Cambridge as it was in Newton’s day as well as in the 1970s. The story was clearly much inspired by the University and by its greatest scientist, so it is appropriate that it returns to contemporary Cambridge in its conclusion. Anyone looking to get into the Cambridge way of things this Michaelmas would be well served by reading this expertly-crafted and enthralling book.