BOOK REVIEW: HYPATIA’S LOVER
D. R. Khashaba, b. 1927, an independent philosopher, published Let Us Philosophize (1998), Plato: An Interpretation (2005), and Socrates’ Prison Journal (2006). Contributed numerous articles to various online journals. Website: www.Back-to-Socrates.com. Weblog: http://khashaba.blogspot.com . Khashaba, a widower with one daughter, Hanan, and one granddaughter, Farah, lives in his home-country, Egypt.
HYPATIA’S LOVER
D. R. Khashaba
This is a fictionalized account of the last days in the life of Hypatia, the Alexandrian philosopher who was brutally murdered by a Christian mob in 415 AD. The fictional love story is treated allusively, in very light touches, mostly through fleeting recollections evoked by incidents in the sad love stories of two of her students. In the story line the author has not tampered with any known facts.
The tragic tale is followed by a collection of imaginary excerpts from lectures and speeches of Hypatia. The philosophy presented in the imaginary lectures and speeches is confessedly the author’s own. This is rendered pardonable and necessary by the fact that, thanks to the Church, Hypatia’s philosophical works have been completely lost to us.
If the moving portrayal of Hypatia’s tragedy is met with ire in some quarters, the author offers no apology and has no regret. Hypatia’s atrocious slaughter is a sore wound in the human conscience that must be kept smarting if it is not to fester and poison the whole human body.