complacent) girl, Aspirin takes her to his place so he can figure out to whom he should send her the next morning. His decision to bring Alyona into his apartment changes his life dramatically. Things move quickly, with strange men coming to the apartment ostensibly to take Alyona “back” to where she came from, Alyona explaining that she is actually from another dimension or plane of existence, and the subtle transformation of the girl’s teddy bear from an innocent toy to a bloodthirsty creature that will rip to shreds anyone who threatens her. Aspirin solicits advice on what to do with her, but life goes on—his work at the nightclub , his radio show, his frequent hookups, and his insecurities leave Aspirin unable to make a decision to drop Alyona off at a juvenile facility or a shelter. Not only does Alyona ask to stay with Aspirin, but that mysterious man who came by has somehow spontaneously generated a birth certificate for the girl that lists the DJ as her father. Thus begins Aspirin’s and our own selfdoubt : Is Aspirin actually her father? Is the girl psychologically disturbed and trying to pull off some kind of scam? Or is she some sort of nonhuman creature truly in search of her brother who, like a fallen angel, has fled perfection/paradise in order to live in a world that allows for (musical) creation? Woven throughout the plot is a question about music’s larger purpose: Is it something one should manipulate in order to create varying atmospheres and emotional registers (as Aspirin does), or is it something one creates and then expels out into the world (as Alyona does with her violin)? The Dyachenkos refuse to answer these questions, of course, leaving the reader thinking about the novel long after turning the last page. As in Vita Nostra, the authors are able to create in Daughter from the Dark a moment of delicious uncertainty—an almost physical sensation of shock and doubt in the reader. Rarely does a book harbor such power. Rachel S. Cordasco Madison, Wisconsin Laurent Binet Civilizations Paris. Grasset. 2019. 377 pages. LAURENT BINET’S last novel, La septième fonction du langage (2015), was an elaborate, cleverly constructed satire of the postmodernist period and many of its writers (see WLT, May 2016, 82). His new novel is more ambitious and wide-ranging, since it rewrites much of the history of Western civilization. In this alternate history, it is the Inca and Aztec empires that invade and colonize Europe. The first part of this novel, inspired by Icelandic sagas, gives new meanings and consequences to the unsuccessful attempts at colonization by Vikings. The second part is largely a parody of Christopher Columbus’s journal. It chronicles the utter failure of his voyage and his death in obscurity. In the third and longest part, a civil war within the Inca Empire forces a group of survivors to flee. Led by Prince Atahualpa, they eventually make their way to the island where Columbus’s boats remain, empty and forgotten. They repair the boats and set sail for a new land. Their voyage of discovery leads them to Lisbon, where they arrive shortly after the 1531 earthquake . As they learn more about Portugal, Spain, and the rest of Europe, the Incas gradually take advantage of the religious and national divisions of what is to them the New World. Atahualpa ’s rise to power in Spain and other parts of Europe is complicated by the arrival of Aztec conquerors in France and England. Both groups of colonizers profit from the new transatlantic trade routes that are created after their conquests. The last part of Binet’s novel provides an alternate biography of Cervantes, who meets Montaigne before being shipped off to Mexico. Binet combines fictional characters and well-known historical figures, whose destinies are radically changed by the novel’s civilizational reversal of fortune. Throughout the narrative, the author indulges in revised versions of historical references: an Inca rewriting of Martin Luther’s ninetyfive theses, an Aztec pyramid (and human sacrifices) in the courtyard of the Louvre, the Inca sun god bringing tolerance and peace to regions previously devastated by...