El planeta Arbre estuvo al borde del colapso hace miles de años. Los nuevos intelectuales, los avotos, se reunieron en monasterios para iniciar un nuevo tipo de vida de reflexion sin elemento religioso alguno. El ritmo de evolucion y cambio de los avotos es lento, mientras el planeta sufre todo tipo de transformaciones. Ahora, casi cuatro mil años despues de la Reconstitucion y la fundacion del sistema cenobitico, el Poder Secular parece ocultar que hay una nave alienigena orbitando el planeta. Descubrirla, establecer contacto y comprender a esos extraños seres procedentes de otro lugar es el gran trabajo que espera al protagonista, fra Erasmas, discipulo del heterodoxo Orolo.. / Anathem, the latest invention by the New York Times bestselling author of Cryptonomicon and The Baroque Cycle, is a magnificent creation: a work of great scope, intelligence, and imagination that ushers readers into a recognizableyet strangely invertedworld. Fraa Erasmas is a young avout living in the Concent of Saunt Edhar, a sanctuary for mathematicians, scientists, and philosophers, protected from the corrupting influences of the outside ""saecular"" world by ancient stone, honored traditions, and complex rituals. Over the centuries, cities and governments have risen and fallen beyond the concent's walls. Three times during history's darkest epochs violence born of superstition and ignorance has invaded and devastated the cloistered mathic community. Yet the avout have always managed to adapt in the wake of catastrophe, becoming out of necessity even more austere and less dependent on technology and material things. And Erasmas has no fear of the outsidethe Extramurosfor the last of the terrible times was long, long ago
