Travel to Middle East

In an Antique Land: History in the Guise of a Traveler's Tale

Format: Paperback
Author: Amitav Ghosh
ReleaseDate: 29 March, 1994
Publisher: Vintage
Rating:

Wonderful book and one that I had read before , but once was not enough
I just thought I would like to have a copy and read it again. I had read this book few years ago , but recently I had a conversation with a freind about it.
A book that I will recomend .

Enjoyed immensely-have lived in the area
Although I have not researched in the Egypt I can relate to many research experiences of the author. I enjoyed this book immensely as I have lived and researched in the Kanara Coast of India where a main character in the book spends a great deal of his life and where there have been from early times trade relations with the Middle East. It was a real treat for me. Martha B. Ashton-Sikora.

It all comes together and makes an unforgettable point
Then it became clear to me. Although I was immediately fascinated by the historical and literary detective story of the 12th century Jewish merchant and his Indian servant, I did not fully understand Ghosh's mission in writing this book until nearly at the end. This book is an elegy for a way of life that is forever lost. In the 12th century, Jews, Muslims, and Hindus worked in tandem as traders and merchants, with the only reprisals being angry remonstrances rather than armed violence. What we call sophisticated Western civilization has changed all of that.

Just as Portuguese and Dutch invasions of the Indian Ocean ended the medieval way of cooperation, the quiet life of the Egyptian villages in which Ghosh lived also ended -- within our lifetimes. As televisions and refrigerators came to those villages, so did anger, strife, and urbanization. There was money to be made during the Iran-Iraq war if you were a young Egyptian man, but you would never return to your village.

This book was slow-moving in places but ultimately unforgettable.

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