Samarkand - Amin Malouf

 A novel built around an imagined life of Omar Khayyam.  

This is the second time I have read this novel, and I found it much less compelling than the first time I read it.  No doubt, partly because of a waning of my interest in the history of Iran and Central Asia, and also the understanding that very few, if any, traces of this world remain.

Basically, though, it is the style of the novel that I can't relate to.  It seems very much a 19th century novel  The style is somewhat formal, the vocabulary a bit recherche.  The characters are also somewhat exaggerated caricatures of types:  the mysterious persian princess, the american man of reason, the conniving eastern potentate, the clear-eyed bon vivant, etc.  The emotional tone of the characters is also to monochromatic and high - love, regret, righteous indignation, all with capital letters.  In sum, it reads too much like a 19th century moral tale.  Also, like a 19th century romantic tale with love pursued and lost, with nostalgic regret.  

Unfortunate, because what Malouf is trying to do is important.  Through his novels, he is trying to portray a Middle East and Islamic world that the West is ignorant of.  He wants to show that there is more to the Middle East than religious fundamentalism, ignorant sectarianism and self-righteous moralizing.  As he shows, there has always been a conflict between narrow-minded religious dogmatism and more enlightened, reasoned, humanistic visions, but the currently dominant fundamentalism was not always the most powerful view.