Alcibiades, Mon Amour

Overview

Alan Chadwick, a sophomore at a private Ivy League college in 1978 Massachusetts, is hypnotized at the start of the academic year while attending a philosophy department party. Under the exotic spell of Dr. Lisa Gibson, he travels back in time to Ancient Greece and soon finds his identity caught between past and present lives. His college’s production of Plato’s Symposium only complicates matters, plunging Alan and his closest friends, Todd and Ginnie, into the psychological abyss, along with his philosophy professor, Tabor Schubert, who becomes the focus of Alan’s obsession with Socrates.

Will grand karma be thwarted by the Socratic method?

Booklife Review/Publishers Weekly: 
At the novel’s heart is Plato’s Symposium, whose chorus of voices rings through the pages. Readers familiar with Greek philosophy—and how young people’s encounters with it can be transformative—will delight in this contemporary exploration of love. The takeaway: a smart, time-crossed novel of a student, a professor, ancient Greece, and obsession.

Independent Book Review:
In a world where the past collides with the choices of the present, Tobias Maxwell’s
Alcibiades, Mon Amour beckons readers into a gripping exploration of identity and
desire … Blending magical realism with gothic undertones, this novel challenges our understanding of philosophy and the moral dilemmas it evokes, inviting readers to reflect on the complexities of human desire and the repression that shapes us …Maxwell's writing showcases a strong command of genre fiction as well as the historical and mythological context surrounding Socrates.