'Penguin Island' by Anatole France

A partially sighted priest baptizes a bunch of penguins, because he thinks they are short pagans who need to be saved through Jesus Christ. This causes a commotion in Heaven, resulting in God transforming the penguins into humanoids and giving them souls. End of part 1 of 8. The rest of the book describes the history of the Penguin People's civilization, which is a satire of real human history.

When I first heard about this book - I'm not sure when or where - I thought it sounded so mad that I had to get round to reading it eventually. Re-read that premise above. It's brilliant.

I was disappointed: I did not enjoy the majority of the book.

I liked the opening. I do enjoy it when authors play around with mythology. God gets some great lines, include this circumlocution when reconciling human free will and divine determinism:

"My foreknowledge must not encroach upon their free will. In order not to impair human liberty, I will be ignorant of what I know, I will thicken upon my eyes the veils I have pierced, and in my blind clearsightedness I will let myself be surprised by what I have foreseen."

I enjoyed the ending: a commercialized Penguin dystopia being attacked by disillusioned terrorists. I do enjoy dystopian SF.

'The great Penguin people had no longer either traditions, intellectual culture, or arts. The progress of civilization manifested itself among them by murderous industry, infamous speculation, and hideous luxury. Its capital assumed, as did all the great cities of the time, a cosmopolitan and financial character. An immense and regular ugliness reigned within it. The country enjoyed perfect tranquility. It had reached its zenith.

The houses were never high enough to satisfy them; they kept on making them still higher and built them of thirty or forty storeys: with offices, shops, banks, societies one above another; they dug cellars and tunnels ever deeper downwards.'

I would recommend reading parts 1 and 8, 'The Beginnings' and 'Future Times', but I can't bring myself to recommend the rest of the novel. It had its moments, but there are far better things to read. Maybe if I was more aware of French history I would have enjoyed it more. I found it a hard chore to slog through, waiting for the good bits to crop up and then vanish pages behind me.