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The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II

The Kingdom on the Waves

Paperback
$12.99 US
5.75"W x 8.06"H x 1.5"D   | 18 oz | 20 per carton
On sale Oct 13, 2009 | 592 Pages | 9780763646264
Age 14 and up | Grade 9 & Up
Reading Level: Lexile 1060L
Sequel to the National Book Award Winner!

"A novel of the first rank, the kind of monumental work Italo Calvino called ‘encyclopedic’ in the way it sweeps up history into a comprehensible and deeply textured pattern." — The New York Times Book Review


Fearing a death sentence, Octavian and his tutor, Dr. Trefusis, escape through rising tides and pouring rain to find shelter in British-occupied Boston. Sundered from all he knows — the College of Lucidity, the rebel cause — Octavian hopes to find safe harbor. Instead, he is soon to learn of Lord Dunmore's proclamation offering freedom to slaves who join the counterrevolutionary forces. 

In Volume II of his unparalleled masterwork, M. T. Anderson recounts Octavian's experiences as the Revolutionary War explodes around him, thrusting him into intense battles and tantalizing him with elusive visions of liberty. Ultimately, this astonishing narrative escalates to a startling, deeply satisfying climax, while reexamining our national origins in a singularly provocative light.
  • SELECTION
    ALA Best Books for Young Adults
  • SELECTION
    Horn Book Fanfare
  • SELECTION
    Kirkus Reviews Editor Choice Award
  • SELECTION
    New York Times Notable Book
  • SELECTION
    Publishers Weekly Best Children's Book of the Year
  • HONOR
    Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor Book
  • HONOR
    Michael L. Printz Honor Book
A sweeping and epic novel…will someday be recognized as a novel of the first rank, the kind of monumental work Italo Calvino called ‘encyclopedic’ in the way it sweeps up history into a comprehensive and deeply textured pattern.
—New York Times Book Review

With an eye trained to the hypocrisies and conflicted loyalties of the American Revolution, Anderson resoundingly concludes the finely nuanced bildungsroman begun in his National Book Award–winning novel.
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Fascinating historical fiction…a thoughtful and timeless examination of the nature of humanity.
—School Library Journal (starred review)

Awe-inspiring...Even more present in this volume are passionate questions, directly relevant to teens’ lives, about basic human struggles for independence, identity, freedom, love, and the need to reconcile the past.
—Booklist (starred review)

Epic quality.
—The Horn Book (starred review)

One of the few volumes to fully comprehend the paradoxes of the struggle for liberty in America.
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Characters are lively and engaging with diverse personalities…a riveting book...Highly recommended.
—Library Media Connection, starred review

Octavian’s introspection born of a philosopher’s upbringing adds depth to the tale…a fast-moving plot…a satisfying finality to the story.
—Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books (starred review)

Places Octavian at the heart of…harrowing historical episodes underscoring the bleakness of a tale that is ultimately about the melancholy predicament of a brilliantly educated and appealing young black man in a world that has no place for him.
—Wall Street Journal

This deeply moving re-imagining of a little-known episode in American history should be required reading not only for high school students of the American Revolution, but, I would argue, for anyone who wants to see just what brilliance is possible in so-called children's books.
—Bookpage

It’s probably the best young-adult novel in American history, top 10 for sure.
—TIME Magazine

A singular achievement, a work of historical fiction that feels truly original and seems destined to endure.
—San Francisco Chronicle

Open-ended, deliberately unclear about what happens next…the young man now seems to look within himself for the strength to live the rest of his life rather than looking toward one political side or the other. Readers end the stories awed by the overwhelming nature of the obstacles the characters face and by their persistent strength as survivors.
—Chicago Tribune

Anderson's powerful and unforgettable novel is a vital contribution to the ongoing national conversation on the subject [slavery] and its effects on into the present day.
—Los Angeles Times

The riveting saga… poses questions about our nation's hard-won liberty that are as illuminating as they are disturbing.
—St. Louis Post-Dispatch

The story continues to be a gripping one, unusual in offering a lens through which to see the Revolutionary War different from that to which Americans have been exposed — the views of a black man sympathetic, for the most part, to the king…It's a truly courageous undertaking, ambitious in its scope in ways unparalleled by any other author working in this genre.
—Houston Chronicle

Surpasses long-awaited expectations…a remarkable conclusion to an unforgettable story.
—The Midwest Book Review

One of the best-written - and most challenging - young adult books I've ever read.
—The Millions blog
  
The rain poured from the heavens as we fled across the mud-flats, that scene of desolation; it soaked through our clothes and bit at the skin with its chill. It fell hard and ceaseless from the heavens as the deluge that had both inundated Deucalion and buoyed up Noah; and as with that deluge, we knew not whether it fell as an admonition for our sins or as the promise of a brighter, newly washed morning to come.

I left all that I knew behind me. Though the ways of the College of Lucidity were strange to the world and the habits of its academicians eccentric, they were familiar to me; and I traded them now for uncertainty and strife. Though I returned, indeed, to Boston, that town best known to me, its circumstances were changed, now that it was the seat of the King’s Army and sat silent and brooding in the Bay. We knew not what we would find therein.

Dr. Trefusis and I stumbled across the ribbed sand. Treading through seaweed mounded in pools, we slithered and groped, that we might retain our footing; and on occasions, we fell, Dr. Trefusis’s hands bleeding from the roughness of rock and incision of barnacles.

We wound through the meanders that led between stubbled mud-banks in no straight or seemly course. I pulled Dr. Trefusis out of the ditches where water still ran over the silt. We crawled over knolls usually submerged by the Bay. At some point, soaked, he shed his coat.

After a time, there was no feature but the sand, corrugated with the action of the tides. We made our way across a dismal plain, groping for detail, sight obscured.

But that morning I had been a prisoner, a metal mask upon my face, and my jowls larded with my own vomit, in a condition which could hardly have been more debased; but that morning I had watched the masters of my infancy and youth writhe upon the floor and fall into unpitied slumber, perhaps their bane. A sentence of death might already rest upon my head. The thought of this appeared fleetingly — the memory of those bodies on the floor, bound with silken kerchiefs — and at this, I found I could not breathe, and wished to run faster, that I might recover my breath.

Tumbling through the darkness of those flats, revolving such thoughts amidst utter indistinctness, I feared I would never again find myself; all I knew was lost and sundered from me; I knew not anymore what actuated me. We ran on through the night, across the sand, and it was as Dr. Trefusis had always avowed in his sparkish philosophy, that there was no form nor matter, that we acted our lives in an emptiness decorated with an empty show of substance, and a darkness infinite behind it.

Forms and figures loomed out of the rain: boulders in our path, gruesome as ogres to my susceptible wits, hulking, pocked and eyed with limpets, shaggy with weeds.

We came upon a capsized dinghy in the mud, mostly rotted, and barrels half-sunk. My aged companion now leaned upon my shoulder as we walked, his breath heavy in his chest.

Once, I started with terror at a ratcheting upon my foot, to find a horseshoe crab trundling past in search of a pool, its saber-tail and lobed armor grotesque in the extreme. Dr. Trefusis, wheezing, greeted it, "Old friend."

His amiability to the crab, I feared, was merely a pretense to stop our running. He did not seem well.

We could no longer detect the city, the night was so black, so full of water and motion, so unsparing was the drench. Our senses disorganized, our frames trembling with cold, we calculated as best we could the direction of our town and made our way across that countryside of dream.

Once I was shown by the scholars of the College a rock, spherical in shape, which, when chiseled open, revealed a tiny cavern of crystal; and they told me that these blunt stones often held such glories; that though some were filled only with dust, others, when broke open, enwombed the skeletons of dragons or of fish, beaked like birds. Thus I felt in approaching my city; that place which seemed known stone, but which, when riven after its long gestation, might contain either wonders, or ash, or the death in infancy of some clawed terror.

We found ourselves at the brink of the returning tide. We walked through it without notice, so thick was the very air with water, until the flood reached Dr. Trefusis’s knees, and there he halted, swaying. "I cannot continue," said he. "I will return to shore."

Thus his offer; but well did I know that he had no intention of returning to the bank, and could not unassisted, did he wish to. I was aware that if I left him, he would sink to the ground and allow the waters to cover him.

I instructed him to climb upon my shoulders.

"I will drag you down, Octavian."

"You have risked your all for me, sir; and it is only right that I do the same for you."

He considered this, and at length, we now feeling the motion of the tide through our legs, said, "When I become burdensome, cast me off backwards."

I leaned down as best I could with the waters rising, and he clambered atop me, clawing at my head and neck for purchase. When he was situated, I stood again and began striding through the returning sea.

_______

THE ASTONISHING LIFE OF OCTAVIAN NOTHING, TRAITOR TO THE NATION, VOLUME TWO: THE KINGDOM ON THE WAVES by M.T. Anderson. Copyright © 2008 by M. T. Anderson. Published by Candlewick Press, Inc., Somerville, MA.

About

Sequel to the National Book Award Winner!

"A novel of the first rank, the kind of monumental work Italo Calvino called ‘encyclopedic’ in the way it sweeps up history into a comprehensible and deeply textured pattern." — The New York Times Book Review


Fearing a death sentence, Octavian and his tutor, Dr. Trefusis, escape through rising tides and pouring rain to find shelter in British-occupied Boston. Sundered from all he knows — the College of Lucidity, the rebel cause — Octavian hopes to find safe harbor. Instead, he is soon to learn of Lord Dunmore's proclamation offering freedom to slaves who join the counterrevolutionary forces. 

In Volume II of his unparalleled masterwork, M. T. Anderson recounts Octavian's experiences as the Revolutionary War explodes around him, thrusting him into intense battles and tantalizing him with elusive visions of liberty. Ultimately, this astonishing narrative escalates to a startling, deeply satisfying climax, while reexamining our national origins in a singularly provocative light.

Awards

  • SELECTION
    ALA Best Books for Young Adults
  • SELECTION
    Horn Book Fanfare
  • SELECTION
    Kirkus Reviews Editor Choice Award
  • SELECTION
    New York Times Notable Book
  • SELECTION
    Publishers Weekly Best Children's Book of the Year
  • HONOR
    Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor Book
  • HONOR
    Michael L. Printz Honor Book

Praise

A sweeping and epic novel…will someday be recognized as a novel of the first rank, the kind of monumental work Italo Calvino called ‘encyclopedic’ in the way it sweeps up history into a comprehensive and deeply textured pattern.
—New York Times Book Review

With an eye trained to the hypocrisies and conflicted loyalties of the American Revolution, Anderson resoundingly concludes the finely nuanced bildungsroman begun in his National Book Award–winning novel.
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Fascinating historical fiction…a thoughtful and timeless examination of the nature of humanity.
—School Library Journal (starred review)

Awe-inspiring...Even more present in this volume are passionate questions, directly relevant to teens’ lives, about basic human struggles for independence, identity, freedom, love, and the need to reconcile the past.
—Booklist (starred review)

Epic quality.
—The Horn Book (starred review)

One of the few volumes to fully comprehend the paradoxes of the struggle for liberty in America.
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Characters are lively and engaging with diverse personalities…a riveting book...Highly recommended.
—Library Media Connection, starred review

Octavian’s introspection born of a philosopher’s upbringing adds depth to the tale…a fast-moving plot…a satisfying finality to the story.
—Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books (starred review)

Places Octavian at the heart of…harrowing historical episodes underscoring the bleakness of a tale that is ultimately about the melancholy predicament of a brilliantly educated and appealing young black man in a world that has no place for him.
—Wall Street Journal

This deeply moving re-imagining of a little-known episode in American history should be required reading not only for high school students of the American Revolution, but, I would argue, for anyone who wants to see just what brilliance is possible in so-called children's books.
—Bookpage

It’s probably the best young-adult novel in American history, top 10 for sure.
—TIME Magazine

A singular achievement, a work of historical fiction that feels truly original and seems destined to endure.
—San Francisco Chronicle

Open-ended, deliberately unclear about what happens next…the young man now seems to look within himself for the strength to live the rest of his life rather than looking toward one political side or the other. Readers end the stories awed by the overwhelming nature of the obstacles the characters face and by their persistent strength as survivors.
—Chicago Tribune

Anderson's powerful and unforgettable novel is a vital contribution to the ongoing national conversation on the subject [slavery] and its effects on into the present day.
—Los Angeles Times

The riveting saga… poses questions about our nation's hard-won liberty that are as illuminating as they are disturbing.
—St. Louis Post-Dispatch

The story continues to be a gripping one, unusual in offering a lens through which to see the Revolutionary War different from that to which Americans have been exposed — the views of a black man sympathetic, for the most part, to the king…It's a truly courageous undertaking, ambitious in its scope in ways unparalleled by any other author working in this genre.
—Houston Chronicle

Surpasses long-awaited expectations…a remarkable conclusion to an unforgettable story.
—The Midwest Book Review

One of the best-written - and most challenging - young adult books I've ever read.
—The Millions blog

Author

  

Excerpt

The rain poured from the heavens as we fled across the mud-flats, that scene of desolation; it soaked through our clothes and bit at the skin with its chill. It fell hard and ceaseless from the heavens as the deluge that had both inundated Deucalion and buoyed up Noah; and as with that deluge, we knew not whether it fell as an admonition for our sins or as the promise of a brighter, newly washed morning to come.

I left all that I knew behind me. Though the ways of the College of Lucidity were strange to the world and the habits of its academicians eccentric, they were familiar to me; and I traded them now for uncertainty and strife. Though I returned, indeed, to Boston, that town best known to me, its circumstances were changed, now that it was the seat of the King’s Army and sat silent and brooding in the Bay. We knew not what we would find therein.

Dr. Trefusis and I stumbled across the ribbed sand. Treading through seaweed mounded in pools, we slithered and groped, that we might retain our footing; and on occasions, we fell, Dr. Trefusis’s hands bleeding from the roughness of rock and incision of barnacles.

We wound through the meanders that led between stubbled mud-banks in no straight or seemly course. I pulled Dr. Trefusis out of the ditches where water still ran over the silt. We crawled over knolls usually submerged by the Bay. At some point, soaked, he shed his coat.

After a time, there was no feature but the sand, corrugated with the action of the tides. We made our way across a dismal plain, groping for detail, sight obscured.

But that morning I had been a prisoner, a metal mask upon my face, and my jowls larded with my own vomit, in a condition which could hardly have been more debased; but that morning I had watched the masters of my infancy and youth writhe upon the floor and fall into unpitied slumber, perhaps their bane. A sentence of death might already rest upon my head. The thought of this appeared fleetingly — the memory of those bodies on the floor, bound with silken kerchiefs — and at this, I found I could not breathe, and wished to run faster, that I might recover my breath.

Tumbling through the darkness of those flats, revolving such thoughts amidst utter indistinctness, I feared I would never again find myself; all I knew was lost and sundered from me; I knew not anymore what actuated me. We ran on through the night, across the sand, and it was as Dr. Trefusis had always avowed in his sparkish philosophy, that there was no form nor matter, that we acted our lives in an emptiness decorated with an empty show of substance, and a darkness infinite behind it.

Forms and figures loomed out of the rain: boulders in our path, gruesome as ogres to my susceptible wits, hulking, pocked and eyed with limpets, shaggy with weeds.

We came upon a capsized dinghy in the mud, mostly rotted, and barrels half-sunk. My aged companion now leaned upon my shoulder as we walked, his breath heavy in his chest.

Once, I started with terror at a ratcheting upon my foot, to find a horseshoe crab trundling past in search of a pool, its saber-tail and lobed armor grotesque in the extreme. Dr. Trefusis, wheezing, greeted it, "Old friend."

His amiability to the crab, I feared, was merely a pretense to stop our running. He did not seem well.

We could no longer detect the city, the night was so black, so full of water and motion, so unsparing was the drench. Our senses disorganized, our frames trembling with cold, we calculated as best we could the direction of our town and made our way across that countryside of dream.

Once I was shown by the scholars of the College a rock, spherical in shape, which, when chiseled open, revealed a tiny cavern of crystal; and they told me that these blunt stones often held such glories; that though some were filled only with dust, others, when broke open, enwombed the skeletons of dragons or of fish, beaked like birds. Thus I felt in approaching my city; that place which seemed known stone, but which, when riven after its long gestation, might contain either wonders, or ash, or the death in infancy of some clawed terror.

We found ourselves at the brink of the returning tide. We walked through it without notice, so thick was the very air with water, until the flood reached Dr. Trefusis’s knees, and there he halted, swaying. "I cannot continue," said he. "I will return to shore."

Thus his offer; but well did I know that he had no intention of returning to the bank, and could not unassisted, did he wish to. I was aware that if I left him, he would sink to the ground and allow the waters to cover him.

I instructed him to climb upon my shoulders.

"I will drag you down, Octavian."

"You have risked your all for me, sir; and it is only right that I do the same for you."

He considered this, and at length, we now feeling the motion of the tide through our legs, said, "When I become burdensome, cast me off backwards."

I leaned down as best I could with the waters rising, and he clambered atop me, clawing at my head and neck for purchase. When he was situated, I stood again and began striding through the returning sea.

_______

THE ASTONISHING LIFE OF OCTAVIAN NOTHING, TRAITOR TO THE NATION, VOLUME TWO: THE KINGDOM ON THE WAVES by M.T. Anderson. Copyright © 2008 by M. T. Anderson. Published by Candlewick Press, Inc., Somerville, MA.