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.  

In the Shadows of the American Century - Alfred W. McCoy

A well-researched catalogue of all the conditions and geopolitical shifts that are easing the U.S. out of its position of dominance.
- a brief examination of how the US become so powerful after WW II (economics in a fractured world)
- fracturing of social cohesion at home
- American loss of status and credibility through support for oppressive regimes, use of torture, covert operations harmful to the populations of other countries
- over reliance on military threat to force other countries to acquiesce the US lead / interests
- decline in economic performance (education failure, investment failure)
-decline in share of world economic activity as other countries' economic performance grows

The sections on China are very interesting.   They have a completely different approach to foreign relations.  They use their enormous reserves to build infrastructure partnerships with other countries and improve economies for both partners.   Some of the infrastructure projects are huge:  rail lines to Europe,  high speed rail lines to Europe (China to Berlin in 2 days!)  Infrastructure to link Europe, China and Africa in one large trading block. 

McCoy spends time at the beginning of the book exploring an old idea - Central Asia as the strategic key to world dominance.  If you can control or create a network linking this area with Europe, the East and Africa, then you have the dominant economy in the world.  He sees much of China's foreign policy as working towards this goal.

A book to reread, as there are many threads.

My European Family: the first 54,000 years - Karin Bojs

Set as a personal genealogy explored through a DNA history of Europe from the Neolithic period.  (The personal setting doesn't sit so well with the scientific basis, in my mind anyway.  Would have been better as a straight out popular science book.)
Brings up a number of interesting points about European history and also about archaeology as a discipline.
First, DNA evidence seems to indicate that farming was carried into the whole of Europe by immigrants from modern day Syria and Turkey ie.  the place where farming seems to have originated.  Early farmers have radically different DNA from the local hunters and gatherers in the period where farming first moved into areas in Europe.  Later, the groups seem to have mixed as the hunters moved into the farming communities.

Many people carry a small amount of Neanderthal DNA, so Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon people mated in some way.  The fact that so many carry a small part of this DNA would indicate that the early mixed individuals had a better survival rate than those without the Neanderthal DNA.  Perhaps some adaptation to cold climates, as the Neanderthals had been living in this kind of environment for millennia.

Every living human being's mitochondrial DNA comes from a single female way back in history! Apparently, at some point we almost died out as a species?

There were several waves of immigration into Europe from Africa, but only two waves seemed to have been able to survive in the long run, the Neanderthal and the Cro-Magnon.

Europe's population was formed by essentially three waves of immigration - two from Africa, and a last one from Central Asia during the Iron Age.

DNA analysis has upset a lot of theories about social development and migration that have been developed over the years.  Many older archaeologists couldn't accept the validity of DNA-based information as it blew their pet theories and their careers out of the water.  So much for disinterested science.  Some also seem to have objected to the DNA-based conclusions on essentially racist grounds. (There is no such thing as 'disinterested' thinking....)

Worth reading for the nice summary of current DNA research in archaeology.

The Carpet and the Connoisseur - Saint Louis Museum

A fabulous collection of carpets, some over 400 years old.  Excellent colour reproductions with closeups of details and information on origin, etc. for each carpet.

Silk Roads: A New History of the World - Peter Frankopan

An excellent new look at the history of Central Asia and the Silk Road.  Frankopan begins the book with a brief chronological overview and then moves on to look at the movement of goods and ideas from the Far East to Europe from several points of view - luxury goods exchange, idea exchange, culture exchange, religion exchange, slave exchange, disease and plague exchange.  He also pursues the topic beyond the traditional overland route and includes the move to trade by long distance European sailing ships in the concept of Silk Road.  He pursues it into the modern age, looking at the Suez Canal and the eventual Suez Canal crisis as part of the history of the Silk Road.  The book continues right up to contemporary times where Central Asia is undergoing a little recognized renaissance as a trading centre due to its rich natural resources - overlooked perhaps because the benefits largely seem to accrue to the top social echelons, which is actually the traditional wealth distribution structure in Central Asia way back to early Silk Road times.

He also notes patterns in this trade route through the ages - the importance of slave trading as a generator of wealth and capital at the beginning of each group's period of dominance - arabs, Vikings, Europeans.  The tendency of wealth to accrue at the top of society.

Worth rereading.

The Mighty Dead: Why Homer Matters - Adam Nicolson

Full of interesting bits:

"Of about three thousand languages spoken today, seventy-eight have a written literature.  The rest exist in the mind and the mouth.  Language - man - is essentially oral."  p. 68

Homer can be seen as a remembering of the culture and life of the bronze age warriors.  This links him to the semi-pastoral tribes of the first Indo-Europeans who tamed the horse, first used wagons, and moved outwards as warrior bands from their traditional homeland to establish all the large european language groups of today.

It is an interesting read and personal engagement with Homer's work, especially the Odyssey.  Nicolson presents some interesting evaluations and personal reactions to the work.  A good introduction for actually reading the poems.



To find:
1) Milman Parry - important Homer scholar exploring pre-written storytelling tradition

2) Duncan Macdonald - storyteller from Hebrides, South Uist (The Man of the Habit - one story)

3) Homer - Odyssey - trans. Robert Fagles
    Homer - The Iliad - trans. Robert Fagles

4) The Making of Homeric Verse: The Collected Papers of Milman Parry - Adam Parry

5) The Singer of Tales - Albert Lord

6) Indo-European Language and Culture:  An Introduction - Benjamin W. Anthony

7) The Making of Bronze Age Eurasia - Philip L. Kohl

8) Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World - J.P. Mallory
     and D.Q. Adams

9) Symbols and Warriors:  Images of the European Bronze Age - Richard J. Harrison

10) The Rise of Bronze Age Society - Kristian Kristiansen and Thomas B. Larsson

11) The Poetics of Space - Gaston Bachelard

12) European Societies in the Bronze Age - Anthony F. Harding

The Honey Thief - Najaf Mazari, Robert Hillman

A wonderful collection of short stories set in the Hazara area of Afghanistan.  The author is Hazara and manages to catch a wonderfully guileless voice in these stories, a voice from another time and another life.  Some of the stories cross each other in time or with characters.
The effects of all the war and turmoil appear in the story, but they do not dominate - they are a background against which the characters must live their lives.
This book also offers a different image of practicing Muslims than you usually meet in the media these days.
Another interesting element of this book is the stories portraying a Muslim people living close to nature and in an intimate relationship with their surroundings - this is unusual.  It provides and interesting contrast to the portrayals of native peoples of North America and Australia.

The author's story is also interesting and worth checking out on the Internet.

Lost Enlightenment - Central Asia's Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane - S. Frederick Starr

A fascinating account of one of the great forgotten ages (and regions) of intellectual and artistic achievement.  A worthwhile read for a number of reasons:

- the sheer contrast of the historical region with its current state

- the tantalizing hints of what must have been there as an intellectual and artistic tradition before the arab invasion, which was really the arrival of the barbarians by then central asian standards

- the underlying theme of the importance of persian culture and cultures of the persian linguistic families in the flowering of this great age; underlines that this culture was a highly influential culture in the whole middle-eastern and central asian region

- the historical importance of this central asian intellectual tradition to the later flowering of european thought and development, both as a source of ideas and as a source of ancient texts 

- Starr's speculations on the reason for the decline of the region:  increasing focus on religious dogmatism in a conflict between the two versions of Islam leads to intolerance and a narrowing of the field of thought - something to consider in this age of dogmatisms, religious, cultural, social, political as so on...

- Starr's observation that, even excluding the possible highly advanced society preceding the arab invasion, this Central Asian Golden Age lasted longer than any other similar historical golden period in any other society world-wide

- great source for thinkers and poets to chase down

This book is a great reference to put any writers (Rumi, Khayam etc.) in their political and social context.

Not a fast read, as it is very detailed and explores central intellectual themes as well as social, political, and economic milieux. 

Empires and Barbarians: Migration Development and the Birth of Europe - Peter Heather

A very interesting topic, and the author is obviously an expert in his field.  Unfortunately, his writing style is impenetrable.  I find myself skipping down the page, running over sentences, looking for "the meat".  I keep muttering to myself, "Get to the point!"  Convoluted sentences, overly detailed digressions, very academic vocabulary and structures - unnecessary for the topic.  Too bad.

From the first chapter or so of the books, I came away with some important ideas:

1) the concept of wholesale tribal migration (men, women and children with their culture) has largely been supplanted in early history

2) if there was migration, it was probably of warriors who replaced existing elites in areas conquered, and then integrated with the local population in a two-way dance of mutual influence.  (this ties into a gender article I read recently - shortage of opportunity for males in most societies - warrior-adventurer as a solution to shortage of resources/women for a society's males) - this elite migration/integration concept is strongly supported by DNA studies in Asia Minor, where the population, though Turkish and central asian culturally, is basically genetically contiguous with Greece and the Balkans

3) cultures and people can mutate, change, develop without a change of population - innovative influence coming from outside

4) in prehistory and early history, the concept of culturo-linguistic (self-aware?) peoples/tribes/ethnic groups, is a projection of 19th and early 20th century european nationalism onto the past - if you examine the history of invading/migratory groups, you see shifting tribal/cultural identities, depending on circumstances, opportunities and political expediency - a useful tool for modern-day nationalistic politicians, but a complete fiction never-the-less

Too bad about the rest of the book.

Soul - Andrey Platonov

I had recently come across a reference to Platonov as an interesting Russian writer from the period of the early revolution through to Stalinism.   So I decided to seek him out.
Unfortunately, I didn't enjoy reading the book Soul all that much.  It seems to be very much a novel of ideas, and fairly dry as far as stories go.  It's hard for me to know how much of early 20th centure central asia is actually reflected in the story line and characters, as I don't have the background knowledge.  I can also see how his writings might have created some scandal in that there seems to be some criticism of Soviet policy - centrality of the State, the concept of Nation, the role of the State as the great saviour.  Again unfortunately I don't have the background to evaluate this.  But, as a casual read, not too appealing, at least for me.
I am waiting for one more of his books, his best know one - Moscow.  We'll see...