BY BILL HOMEWOOD, DECEMBER 2014 (Amazon Review)

You Will Not Be the Same

Without spoiling anything at all for the reader, as this is recounted on the back cover, I can tell you that early in this confection of a book there is a “Eureka moment”: “… When he emerged from the icy fissure, the Scotsman was at first so excited he was barely capable of speaking coherently. But in the end he managed to describe what he had found… ”

The 1962 excavation of a cluster of sealed urns deep under the ice of Antarctica, and the extraordinary revelations contained in some 400 scrolls found within, could be described – if it happened* – as one of the two or three most significant events in the history of the human race. Keirle-Smith writes: “… without the formative millennia of this remote epoch, preceding all others on the planet, our legends, traditions and heritage from the long-lost past would not be as we know them today.”

*I say “if it happened”. Well, Keirle-Smith convincingly presents the evidence, complete with detailed supportive research in the style of the best tradition of academic scholarship. He leads the reader, as a guru might lead a willing disciple, into his meta-world. The CONTENTS list alone is appetising: there are 17 delicious chapters, with tempting titles such as THE AWAKENING, THE SILVER RIVER or THE GOLDEN CITY.

As an actor I have had the pleasure of recording several books by H Rider Haggard for Naxos AudioBooks: KING SOLOMON’S MINES, ALAN QUATERMAIN and SHE. Rider Haggard presents each of these unashamedly as a narrative of true events, and compounds the lie with the device of scholarly introduction. In recent times, the novelist Dan Brown has similarly presented his novels ANGELS & DEMONS, THE DA VINCI CODE and LOST SYMBOLS as works of scholarship.

We don’t mind this at all. We readers, like theatre audiences, happily suspend disbelief for the duration of the entertainment – indeed we expect to do just that. It is our pact with the artist. Never before ZANDERNATIS, however, has an author demanded that I subscribe wholeheartedly not only to the game, but to accepting, as an act of faith, the ethos and actual substance of his work. I have to say I found this hilarious fun, and marvelled as I read at Keirle-Smith’s endless invention. I am an actor, and always ready to venture professionally into Playland. Here, let me tell you, I did not need a fee. This author is above all an entertainer. There is only one way to read this book: be a rebel, put on your gaudiest costume and go to the ball. There you will find the outrageous Mr Keirle-Smith, your host, out-costuming, out-revelling and outwitting all comers.

I say – do not be afraid. To be sure, reading ZANDERNATIS will be an epiphany – but there is no need to be frightened, as it should only be a temporary epiphany. When you have turned the last page, with passages from the wonderful “Song of Gorin” still ringing in your ears, you can return to your linear world, to your philosophy, to your history and to the safety of those physical or metaphysical explanations for our existence which you have always taken for granted.

Hmmm…I assure you of one thing, dear reader: you can return to them; of course you can. But if you have just read ZANDERNATIS they will never be the same.