Where Constantinople Falls

The Prince of India or Why Constantinople Fell by Lew Wallace
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I thought this was an amazing book. Two volumes--over 1000 pages--lots of characters and settings--and it was entertaining throughout. I loved it.

These are my thoughts--bit of a jumble:

There is a sort of quirk about the book. The main character, the so-called "Prince of India" is a figure from legend known usually as the Wandering Jew, a man condemned to long life for taunting Jesus on the way to the crucifixion. He's an interesting character, a brilliant man who wants to end religious strife, who travels the world, learns languages, makes himself wealthy so that he can have access to important people, and espouses a sort of unification of religion. Though he does some awful things before the end of the novel--causing a deadly fire before helping the Turks defeat the Greeks--most of the time I found myself very sympathetic to him, particularly as he tried to get the leaders of Islam and Christianity to recognize their connection, their mutual belief in a loving god. He reads like a sort of Gandalf figure, or some other wise man who is endowed with a little supernatural ability. (He's immortal, rich, intelligent, and a capable astrologer. He's not magic, exactly, but he can do some stuff.)

From time to time, the author's overt support for Christianity comes through, rather like you find in Quo Vadis or similar novels (which I also liked, actually), but it's generally no more overt than most Regency or Victorian literature, for example. (We don't get any readings from Fordyce's sermons, thankfully. And we don't get a Jane Eyre preparing to go preach Christianity in India.) It's mostly a romance like Sir Walter Scott or maybe Dumas, with action across Arabia and Syria and, especially, Constantinople, with hidden treasures, sailing ships, war, and abducted maidens who need to be rescued.

The sultan's best friend, Mirza, the best warrior in the story, is the heart of the second half of the novel. He is a loyal fighter who was stolen from his home in Italy as a baby. He is sent to the city as a spy where he is intended in part to gather information for the invasion, but he's tasked even more with the job of watching over and protecting Irene, the beautiful cousin of the emperor. (The sultan previously traveled to her home, disguised as a storyteller, and fell in love with her, intending to marry her.) Mirza falls in love with her too and starts to rethink his identity, taking back his name and title as Count Corti. When the friends meet again, both men pledge to protect Irene, no matter the outcome of the coming war. (They honor this pledge, and in the very end the sultan marries Irene while the count returns home to the mother who never stopped searching for him, where he discovers the sultan has long since paid to rebuild their home and restore their fortunes. But that's a spoiler, so shhh.)

There are about 10 really great characters in this novel, any one of whom should have their own book. Sergius, the idealistic Russian monk, might be my favorite. Irene, the iconoclastic and stoic noblewoman, unbowed after long imprisonment, and who refuses to wear a veil as honest women were expected to do, is admirable and captivating. Lael, the young Jewish woman adopted and educated by the Prince of India, is sweet, and the wealthy Demedes, the epicurean son of a courtier who abducts her and hides her in a cell floating built in the giant underground cistern of Constantinople, is a great villain. The African servant of the Prince of India who helps Sergius find her and free her is a a cool character, too.

The novel concludes with the siege and capture of the city. It's a great retelling, stretching over many packed chapters, all given from the POVs of characters we care about. Very affecting. Very informative.

I enjoyed this from beginning to end, and even though I don't align with the author's central religious belief, I applaud his ecumenical philosophy, the one he gives mostly to the Prince of India and, in some measure, to Queen Irene and the monk Sergius. It's surprising in a novel like this, published in 1893, and I give him some credit. Lew Wallace is better known for Ben Hur, and now that I've read this one I realize I need to read that one, too.

Very good writer. Highly recommended.

View all my reviews

Historical Action Mystery en Español

El asesinato del calígrafo de Bagdad by José Vicente Alfaro
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I thought this was an interesting, entertaining, well researched historical novel with an emphasis on plot and action.

For those like me who are middling Spanish readers, this should be quite comprehensible. I found it so, and that helped me enjoy it.

The story centers on Theobald, an English monk who travels to Baghdad because he wants to be in the center of scientific and literary studies and has skills as a translator. The action takes place on all sides of him--a kidnapped boy, a murdered translator, a framed businessman, an escaped princess, and a powerful caliph facing intrigues of many sorts. It's clever how all these plots (and more) intertwine and are drawn together at the end, and I enjoyed the mystery as much as the action.

It's clear the author did a great deal of research and set the story in the midst of actual events, but I couldn't help thinking that some of the action was out of character for that cultural setting. For example, some of the movement of female characters and interactions with men outside the family probably would not have happened (afaik), and those apparent flaws disturbed my appreciation somewhat. However, the author clearly admired many aspects of that society and generally did it justice, emphasizing the progressive attitudes toward learning and the arts, the period's flourishing trade, and the attitudes of religious tolerance. Overall, the novel gives a fair representation of the empire at that time while telling a compelling and satisfying story.

Recommended.

View all my reviews

Where I Learn Some Stuff and Unlearn Some Other Stuff I Didn't Know Wasn't So

No god but God: The Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam by Reza Aslan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Whenever I read Reza Aslan, I always think he does so many things well. I am particularly impressed by his scholarship, his clarity, and his evenhandedness, all of which are very much in evidence in this book.

As always, he has excellent command of his subject matter. Aslan speaks authoritatively on the history of Islam and religion in general, on the origins and development of various sects, and the broad range and unique character of many different modern Muslim communities. I found both his narrative and his analysis informative and reliable.

For a novice in the area of religion, this book is a useful guide. Aslan writes in a way that assumes the reader is intelligent but largely uninformed. (Me... also me...) He starts at the beginning, explains the content in plain and straightforward language, including sensitive matters of deep spiritual significance, and trusts the reader to keep up thereafter. I found he offered just about the right amount of support to make the material comprehensible and digestible. An added benefit of such clarity is that the book is entertaining, which is not a given with the subject matter. Sometimes it's a pleasure just to learn things, and I felt like I was learning.

Key to the success of this book is the sense that the author is not slanting his presentation; regardless of his personal feelings, he praises what most readers would find praiseworthy (IMO) and condemns what most would condemn. He writes as objectively about the many disparate elements of Muslim society and history as he does Christian or Hindu, and always with a view to inform, not persuade. I do feel informed, and I appreciate that. I don't feel propagandized, and I appreciate that, too.

There's a lot to learn here, and I feel like this books helps the reader make a good start. In addition, the book is engaging, and it models excellent behavior. I wish it were more common to speak so rationally, objectively, and yet passionately about religion. If more of us could develop this ability, we could do a much better job of spreading peace rather than war, acceptance instead of intolerance, inclusion rather than hate.

It's a pretty dream.

Recommended.

View all my reviews

A Well-Known Religious Person (WKRP) Blows My Mind

God: A Human History by Reza Aslan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

If you want to find an engaging book about religion written with clarity, objectivity, and audacity, find this book (or any other) by Reza Aslan. He does not disappoint.

God: A Human History is fairly short book, with almost half of its pages given to notes, but it is filled with big ideas, and it tells a story about religion in a way I've never seen before. I don't think anything here is original scholarship (thus the lengthy notes) but the book does a wonderful job of imposing narrative order on the chaos of the story of human religion. It explains the universal tendency toward certain spiritual beliefs, and the trajectory from seeing gods in all of nature to gods representing qualities or realms to, eventually, a single god--from animism to polytheism to monolatry to monotheism, by stages. It shows how pantheons are created, how gods rise and fall, how one god or another becomes preeminent among a people and even eliminates all others, and it all seems so obvious after he as explains it.

The description of the way gods are humbled when the people who worship them are defeated by another people worshipping another god was instructive; seeing how the Israelites, defeated and carried away into Babylonian captivity, overcame that setback by seeing their god a different way, a bigger way, was revelatory. (I remember learning about the Deuteronomic history of Israel way back in college, with punishment and reward for the nation depending on its righteousness, but this finally lets me take a step back so that idea makes sense to me historically, not just theologically.)

Though the author is a well-known religious person (WKRP), he writes with an academic's objectivity. His summaries of the stages of development in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are so direct and clear and unflinching, unhampered by hand-wringing or apologies, that they not only answer questions I didn't realize I had, but they do so in a deeply satisfying way. Stories out of the Old Testament (for example) that I always understood in a poetic or metaphorical way now make sense in a literal way; Aslan shows how they can represent an earlier stage of thought, one superseded by later teachings (from monolatry to monotheism, or the blending of Yahweh and El, for example), and once they are seen that way it all adds up. Religion, like politics and economics and every other aspect of society, is understood then to exist in a historical context, telling a story of change over time.

There is a lot here that is new to me, new information which I found interesting and entertaining, but what I like most is the way he has made the history of religion into a coherent story. There is a clear trajectory (I removed "progression," because of its connotations) in the religious thought of humans, one that is driven by our makeup, and having it analyzed and spelled out is very illuminating and very satisfying.

Recommended for eye-opening clarity.

View all my reviews