A mutant fiction of speculative mysticism.

Long before the collapse of the Information Age, in the twelfth century since the appearance of the prophet Christ, young Hildegard finds grace. In this story of survival and miracles, Hildegard encounters love, both queer and divine, and great peril. As the visionary healer travels through the unfamiliar landscape following a great cataclysm, she discovers the mythic quantum energy of viriditas in the natural world around her. Her journey becomes one of return, to the sacred truth of her own being.

Hildegard’s tale is received in the plague year of 2020 by Alice Spawls, and then in the next century, in a sea cave with cracked amethyst walls. On planet Avaaz, once known as Earth, Bhanu Kapil’s Pinky Agarwalia finds fragments of a beautiful codex. Lingua Ignota, Hildegard’s unknown language, bears seeds of renewal for a world in flux.

‘Unknown Language really is unlike any other book I’ve read this year. It merges poetry, prose, and essayic writing into a book much greater than the sum of its parts. Each section alone offers something that resonates beyond the page, and in concert they all feel necessary towards conveying Hildegard von Bingen’s expansive impact. The book is stirring and evocative, even for someone like me with little connection to the Christian mythos. But Unknown Language‘s true strength is in creation. Like Hildegard von Bingen herself, Unknown Language imagines a new mode of being, a way of life outside of the confines of contemporary society. By introducing a new vocabulary, it offers access to an expanse beyond its covers.’ Chicago Review of Books