I’ve read a number of Priest’s novels over the years – I think the first was The Glamour (1984, UK) back in the late 1980s. And there was a period in the late 1990s when I read each new novel by him as it hit paperback. That ended with The Separation (2002, UK), which I seem to recall had a troubled publishing history. It was nearly a decade before his next book appeared, by which point he’d sort of dropped off my radar, before slowly creeping back intermittently over the next couple of decades.

Which is not to say I didn’t like what I’d read, and I’d always admired his writing, and sort of planned to catch up with the works I’d missed. Hence, The Affirmation (1981, UK), which was originally published 44 years ago, and joined the SF Masterworks series in 2011. It’s also the first novel to feature the Dream Archipelago, which Priest returned to several times, in a collection and a further three novels.

In 1976, twenty-nine year old Peter Sinclair suffers a breakdown after a string of appalling luck over a few weeks – his father dies, he’s made redundant, his landlord evicts him, and his girlfriend dumps him. He decides to write his autobiography as a form of recovery. But as he writes, he searches for a “greater truth” by disguising its setting. So the UK becomes Faiandland, London is Jethra, and everyone in Sinclair’s life is given another name.

In this “autobiography”, Sinclair has won a lottery for immortality treatment, and travels south by ship to Collago, an island in the Dream Archipelago. There is a side-effect to the treatment: amnesia. So Sinclar must document his life in order to help the clinic’s therapists restore his memories. But this version of Sinclair has written an “autobiography” too, about his life in London…

The narrative drifts back and forth between Sinclair in the UK and Sinclair in the Dream Archipelago, each one muddying the other. UK Sinclair is clearly in a bad state. He’s rescued by his sister, and then his girlfriend turns up and the two reconcile and move in together. It does not go well. Faiandland Sinclair is not sure he wants to be immortal, even after entering into a relationship with the Dream Archipelago avatar of his girlfriend.

The Dream Archipelago is first presented as an invention of Sinclair, which explains its inconsistencies and the somewhat unharmonious names. It’s equatorial, the northern continent is inhabited, the southern continent is uninhabited, but there’s a war and the islands form a neutral zone. The point being Sinclair’s invented world is not very convincing. But Sinclair is so invested in it – intellectually and emotionally – that he has trouble determining which is which. Details slip and slide between the two, especially after Sinclair has taken the treatment and is trying to regain his memory.

The Affirmation is… unsettling, and cleverly done. Priest covered similar ground in later novels, and in a manner that was more sophisticated. Which is hardly surprising. He had a singular oeuvre, which is definitely worth exploring, and I clearly have more catching up to do.