Long before the collapse of the Information Age, in the twelfth century since the appearance of the prophet Christ, young Hildegard of Bingen finds grace in the ruins of her medieval world. After the great cataclysm and the Angelic power struggle that follows, Hildegard flees the City of God and embarks upon a pilgrimage towards the kingdom of the poor. In this story of survival and miracles, Hildegard encounters love, both queer and divine, and great peril. On the planet Avaaz, in a sea cave with cracked amethyst walls, Pinky Agarwalia finds fragments of a beautiful codex thought to be lost during the evacuation of Earth in the third millennium. To unlock this mystic toolkit, Pinky must decipher its strange symbols and illuminations. Lingua ignota, Hildegard’s unknown language, arrives for a world in flux, one whose coordinates are being recast.
Unknown Language is a mutant fiction of speculative mysticism, featuring time travel, visions and inner paths to outer space. Scheduled for release with Ignota Books on the Feast Day of Hildegard of Bingen, 17 September 2020, the book includes an introductory story by Bhanu Kapil and an afterword by Alice Spawls.
Huw Lemmey is a novelist, artist, and critic living in Barcelona. He is the author of three novels: Unknown Language (2020), Red Tory: My Corbyn Chemsex Hell (2019), and Chubz: The Demonization of my Working Arse (2016). Huw writes on culture, sexuality and cities for the Guardian, Frieze, Flash Art, Tribune, TANK, The Architectural Review, Art Monthly, New Humanist, Rhizome, The White Review, and L’Uomo Vogue, amongst others. He writes the weekly essay series utopian drivel and is the co-host of the podcast ‘Bad Gays’.
2020
Reading Video 