The Invisible Line

A Novel

De: Michael David Lukas

In this audacious historical novel, an American spy agrees to help the victors divide up the spoils of World War I by literally drawing the new borders of the Middle East—only to discover that the relic he holds has far greater power than he could have imagined.

In 1917, Elias Winters arrives in Egypt with a mysterious key entrusted to him by an old-boy network of Western power brokers. He is tasked to use the key to draw the new negotiated border in Ottoman Palestine. But he soon discovers he serves a different mission for the “Old Ones”—an ancient society known for their extraordinary longevity, strength, and ability to draw power from the land.

Elias is determined to harness the key's powers to become one of the Old Ones himself. However, he is not alone in his quest to shape the region in the aftermath of war. Dr. Minna Weizmann believes the key can transform Ottoman Palestine into a Jewish homeland, while Dawood al-Haddad, a young Muslim university student hired to assist Elias, senses the key's dark potential for the Arab nationalist cause.

Competing against others drawn to the key’s mysterious power, Elias, Minna, and Dawood find themselves in a race to finish the line and seize control of history itself. In a region on the verge of transformation and upheaval, The Invisible Line captures a moment of historic turmoil and the lengths we’ll go in the pursuit of power.

Reseñas de la Crítica

“Vividly imagined and hauntingly rendered, The Invisible Line addresses the violence of colonialism and the deep history of the land with moral clarity and magic.”—Adam Mansbach, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Golem of Brooklyn

“Where are hauntings and spirits and vampires not, or not exactly, metaphors? Where in the world can invisible lines destroy and uproot? In Palestine, whose history Michael Lukas reinvents in one of the most intriguing and intricate and inventive novels I’ve read in years.”—Benjamin Moser, author of Anti-Zionism: A Jewish History and Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector

“A deeply original book. The Invisible Line uses genre to weave the fantastic into the real, living history of Palestine’s colonization—brilliantly literalizing the vampiric imperial jockeying that drew today’s map of the world.”—Lydia Kiesling, author of The Golden State and Mobility

“Michael David Lukas is a wonderful and ambitious writer, he can even make you believe that what the Middle East desperately needs is vampires.”—Rabih Alameddine, award-winning author of The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother)

“The history of the land between the river and the sea is reimagined in Michael David Lukas’ visionary and sweeping new novel, The Invisible Line. In addition to its cast of characters tasked with drawing the borders of what would become Mandatory Palestine, this is a story of the spirit and spirits of a place, and of the ways in which the force of collective memory can forge paths to justice. This is an urgent and courageously hopeful read in these most desperate of days.”—Hannah Lillith Assadi, author of Paradiso 17

“What if the agreement responsible for the turmoil in the Middle East was not due to the folly of men but the machinations of a cabal of shadowy supernatural beings? Michael David Lukas’ novel The Invisible Line is a superbly written reimagining of the origin of the cursed Sykes-Picot Agreement, rich in history, imaginatively told.”—Alma Katsu, author of Incarnate