CODEX OF MARCH

Abdurazakov’s slow-burn political thriller presents a chillingly plausible vision of the near future in which the geopolitical map has been violently redrawn.

After a cascade of crises that began with a televised presidential assassination in 2027, the United States has absorbed Canada and Greenland and the United Nations has relocated its permanent headquarters to Samarkand, Uzbekistan. One trigger for these events was the journalist Lyndon Averell, who unveiled the identity of the president’s shooter—a Canadian citizen of Ukrainian origin—and who’s consumed by guilt over the aftermath of this revelation. Jumping ahead to 2035, the novel tells the story of how Averell and Meran Ayhan, the High Commissioner of the Turan Region, derail a plot to assassinate key U.N. leaders and destroy its headquarters—just days after a nuclear blast leveled Islamabad, Pakistan. The events are all tied to the date of March 15, revealing a similar clustering of ruptures throughout history, all the way back to the death of Julius Caesar. The U.N. begins to outsource its responsibilities to NOOS, a self-learning artificial intelligence, by having it assume the organization’s veto power—but NOOS’ eventual self-awareness reveals humanity’s foibles. Abdurazakov’s narrative is riddled with meticulous listings of obscure dates that serve as catalysts for world-altering events. The novel slowly builds toward a denouement that raises the question of whether sentient technology or living beings are in control of human destiny. The work, which features some thinly veiled satirical references, employs thoughtful and smart prose, which perfectly suits the weighty themes: “When great powers redraw the map, there is always someone who concludes he may do the same—if not by right, then by analogy. We say ‘annexation.’ The world hears ‘precedent.’”

A dense and sophisticated fictional warning about the fragility of global order.