The Year 5865

The Year 5865 was published in 1865. It is a remarkable novel, consisting of a first-person narrative related by a character living 4000 years hence, after various disasters have obliterated almost all the documents relating to the world with which we are familiar. In consequence, the narrator's knowledge of the reader's world is severely limited and densely clouded by myth. Hippolyte Mettais' innovative literary method in attempting to interpolate didactic material into a melodrama provide...