“King Abba is a treat for enquiring minds – a ‘must read’ for those on the journey towards knowledge of themselves and the World around them.”

“… beautifully written, and a joy to read ...”

Henri Bortoft author of The Wholeness of Nature and Taking Appearance Seriously (Floris Books)

Strange happenings are afoot in Federal Europe, and even in the palace of King Abba where the royal children have been brought up in a totally protected and safe environment. The unshakable order established since 2022 by the ruling Rational and Scientific Party is under threat from a dissident group known only as ‘The Heretics’ … and challenge is not something that the Party will tolerate. To add to the growing dangers, a mysterious enemy within the court is plotting the overthrow of the European royal family and all that it stands for.

For King Abba, change is just what is needed – regardless of the Statutes of the Party. He realises that revolutions are at times inevitable and that the world his children know is coming to an end. Now he must use all his powers to prepare the children for the total collapse of the present order and the dangers that lie ahead.

King Abba explores the dangers and opportunities of our complex, challenging twenty-first century, and the arising of a new awareness in the world.

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Chapter 1

“Ceci n’est pas un conte.” Denis Diderot

On Tuesday mornings it was History of Science, and Fion and Gentil set off on the long walk through marbled corridors to the library in the south wing. Here Mr Pangoola – himself small and almost perfectly formed – delivered his lessons from what seemed endless pages of notes written in a tiny and immaculate hand.

In the vast elegance of the palace library, everything glowed with the lustre of polished wood, leather and brass. A mighty chandelier cascaded from the ceiling, glittering in the sunlight which today streamed in through the tall casement windows. At one end stood the teacher’s desk, a ton and a half of exquisite hardwood with inlays, curly legs and dragon’s feet. In front, three small desks of gleaming walnut faced in a row with padded chairs to match, and beyond these, reaching to the far end of the room, long tables topped in green leather and lit by heavy brass lamps.

But it was to the soaring ranks of shelves that Fion often let his eyes stray during lessons. The walls seemed like battlements of learning, forming a citadel of knowledge from every century – volume after volume, hundreds, thousands of them, with leathery ridged spines and gold-blocked titles in every known language, the farthest wall lined with cupboards of scrolls and parchments in tongues so ancient they had become unreadable.

The library held a strong fascination for Fion. He loved the stillness of the place, its calm and superior splendour. He would sometimes slip into the room alone, just to browse the shelves and to handle the thick creaking covers and turn the heavy printed pages exuding their smell of ages past. With so much learning in the world, he imagined, an awful lot of it must simply have been forgotten. Perhaps the most we could achieve in a lifetime was to learn again what some other long before us had once known. Was that all, then, we could hope to achieve – to rediscover forgotten knowledge?

His teachers never had an answer to this kind of question – the sort he was always asking himself. Why did they always seem so unshakably, immovably confident in the present state of things? he reflected, observing Mr Pangoola – Head of Science and High Academic Principal of the Royal College – take up his baton to conduct the lesson …