Revisting and retelling history

Amitav Ghosh has a talent for description. He describes in a way that makes me feel like I was right there, looking, watching, hearing. It's the quality I loved about Hungry Tide - I could use that book as a tour guide when I do make it to the Sundarbans. In an Antique Land also has that power. It makes me want to get up, go explore, see a new city beyond what tourists see.

It moves between the 1980s and the 1100s, smoothly; the Egypt of the Jews interwoven with the Egypt of Muslims.It encompasses two countries - India and Egypt - and examines the layers of their relationship with each other - the demands of politics and economics bringing them together, the differences in culture setting them apart. The discourse of three religions that have been in constant conflict in modern times - Islam, Judaism and Hinduism - throws up a synthesis that the modern mind would not imagine.

Through the story of a Jewish merchant and his slave and the Author's quest to decipher their lives, Ghosh shows how history is constructed and how we ourselves never examine the stories that build our interactions and notions of other communities. It is a fascinating journey of discovering little told or remembered stories, the kind that make you think that you too will be a part of history someday. It is a story that makes you realize that most of history is outside the textbooks, hidden in memories and tales

The book is slow, and there are no heroes - much like real life. It is a slow re examination of ingrained notions and its pace is as determined by the reader as by the author.

Operation Shylock

Operation Shylock by Philip Roth is more than just the confession he purports it to be in his subtitle. I will not get into the details of the plot which can be accessed here and here. I am only going to talk about why I found this novel interesting. Let me begin with all that is not good about it. First, unlike my previous (and first) experience with a Philip Roth novel, it is verbose. Long sentences where I lost track of the beginning or the train of thought were a definite disappointment. Second, the beginning is slow and torturously so.

Past these stumbling blocks onto what made the novel worth a read. It explores the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in more than one (or even two dimensions). It impressed on me the fact that it is not as simple as an argument and a counter-argument. That it is a complex web of emotions, intent, conflicting selfish motives and historical legacy; a pot-pouri of thoughts that have often swirled through my head in the context of India's conflict with Pakistan over Kashmir. It brings to fore, through a few conflicted characters, the tangle that a prolonged conflict can become; that it no longer remains a matter of simple logic to identify causality and assign responsibility to one group or another or both find a workable solution. It juxtaposes patriotism against humanitarianism and leaves the reader feeling that neither is as easy to praise or condemn.

Operation Shylock also explores the idea of Jewishness and how the holocaust perpetrated by Hitler may have changed that. It digs into the things that constitute ethnic identity even if one has not been a part of the experience that shaped that community. The conflicts of an American Jew vs. those of an Israeli Jew vs. those of a holocaust survivor all come together to raise questions about the basis of communal identities. It impressed upon me the need to understand why one chooses to identify oneself with a community (social, religious, economic, political or philosophical) and the need to articulate those reasons to one self.

And the final reason why Operation Shylock, despite its failings, will remain a good read to me is the manner in which it explores the curiosity of a writer.