The Second Fall, Anatol Lieven,
Prospect
Like Voltaire criticizing the French aristocracy in the 1700s,
British writer Anatol Lieven attacks America’s materialism. His
short story, ‘The Second Fall,’ published recently in the
London-based magazine Prospect, chronicles the end of
humanity. And most Americans would probably prefer not to see the
image in the mirror that Lieven creates. Lieven, an associate at
the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, portrays a future
in which the entire world unsuccessfully attempts to emulate
America’s consumerism, with dire results, as the ‘greater middle
eastern wars’ erupt in 2032. Lieven takes his readers on a journey
through the chaos of the current millennium, through the horrific
effects of immortality, universal plagues and blights, and constant
warfare to the quiet solitude from the perspective of an immortal
human who is living in space a six-hundred years from now while
searching for a new planet to call home.
–Sara V.
Buckwitz
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