IN AN ANTIQUE LAND: HISTORY IN THE GUISE OF A TRAVELERS TALE PDF, EPUB, EBOOK Amitav Ghosh | 400 pages | 01 Apr 1994 | Random House USA Inc | 9780679727835 | English | New York, United States In an Antique Land: History in the Guise of a Travelers Tale PDF Book The locals never really understood what he was doing there, but most of them accepted him and he was able to observe their lives and beliefs. There are no discussion topics on this book yet. At the time, at least one European was moved to bewilderment by the unfamiliar mores of the region; a response more honest perhaps than the trust in historical inevitability that has supplanted it since. Save on Nonfiction Trending price is based on prices over last 90 days. So what we see in the book is how he navigates these places, whom he meets, what sort of conversations he has and so forth. Make an offer:. Mar 17, Carolyn rated it really liked it Shelves: book-club. In an Antique land for me was a very different experience Details if other :. Ghosh parallels his own sojourns in Egypt, the Malabar coast and return to Egypt, with those of Ben Yiju, who spent some twenty years in Mangalore, marrying a freed Indian slave, before returning to North Africa. You get a sense of the warmth and engagement that he as a person must give out, which bri I suppose the reasons Ghosh is so much better than Katherine Boo at imparting reality to the people he portrays in this book is that first of all, he's a novelist, so he knows how to breathe life into characters, secondly, that he learned Arabic and lived with the people he speaks of over an extended period of time, and finally, that he really liked and cared for these people, as they evidently did for him. In an Antique Land by Amitav Ghosh. I think the story would have been far more compelling if he had merely used his research to compose a fictional tale instead. The reason he was learning Arabic was because he wanted to be able to read a trove of 12th century documents Cambridge held that were from a former synagogue in Egypt. Overall, the Ben Yiju sub-plot added to the past-meets-present theme of the book, but it almost had a Biblical style of listing familial ties and laundry lists of trade interactions, which tended to lose my attention. Vintage Paperback History Magazines. The response will be emailed to you. An interesting weave of non-fiction and fiction. It's a book I'm happy, happy reading and want to keep for years. And don't worry about shipping - it's absolutely free! Some of these figures are real, some only imagine, but all emerge as vividly as the characters in a great novel. His research and relations with families in various Egyptian villages were never fully connected to the characters he was pursuing so many centuries ago. He became fascinated almost to the point of obsession. Both tales were very interesting. May 06, Tova rated it really liked it Shelves: mc-male , wild , owned , adult , south-asian , interesting , non-fiction , religion , read , read-for-school-ughh. Feb 13, Audra rated it really liked it. It sure was terribly awkward and amusing, to me to be a Hindu Indian in a rural Muslim village. The spine may show signs of wear. I started out expecting some really good medeival tales from Ben Yiju and the slave but it was Ghosh's own experiences in Egypt that proved more intriguing and better to me. Feel free to contact us. Maybe the important thing is to try and rebuild that cosmopolitanism as he does here. It was mostly unskilled labor in places with high levels of corruption, so they were prone to exploitation and wage theft. Ghosh reflects at one point that, despite its periodic storms, life in Egypt is overall far more gentle and less violent than the cruel and extreme violence of the Indian subcontinent. An engrossing chronicle of historical detection smoothly integrated into a subtly shaped picture of village life in modern Egypt; by an Indian novelist The Circle of Reason, of great Ask the provider about this item. Certainly in the s when Ghosh's visit took place, the tomb was attracting pilgrims from both the Muslim world and Israel, the latter contributing to a huge tourist industry built around the saint's annual festival. He no longer teaches and is currently writing the next volume of the Ibis Trilogy. First, the story of the author, an Indian actually a Bengali and a Hindu, living in a very small, rural Egyptian village. Skip to main content. Do you burn your dead in India? The Glass Palace by Amitav Ghosh. Amitav Ghosh. I am a little wary when i pick a book by Amitav Ghosh. In all the centuries in which it had flourished and grown, no state or kings or ruling power had ever before tried to gain control of the Indian Ocean trade by force of arms. The two stories are knitted together quite deliberately, with the author switching from one tale to the other at points where there are obvious parallels between the two. Related Searches. In an Antique Land: History in the Guise of a Travelers Tale Writer Cancel Send message. This is the Gujarat law among the heathen. Elegantly written. At the time, at least one European was moved to bewilderment by the unfamiliar mores of the region; a response more honest perhaps than the trust in historical inevitability that has supplanted it since. Add a review Your Rating: Your Comment:. The journey took him to a small village in Egypt, where medieval customs coexist with twentieth-century desires and discontents. These men out of curiosity might ask him to show them his uncircumcised hindu penis. Maybe the important thing is to try and rebuild that cosmopolitanism as he does here. His most recent novel, Sea of Poppies, is the first volume of the Ibis Trilogy. Naipaul this book almost felt like a relief. While living in [the governorate of] Beh Amitav Ghosh is essayist and blogger as well as novelist, and it was the sheer pleasure from some of his essays and blog posts that induced me to take on one of his novels. No where near the best from Amitav, yet eminently readable because the immaculate research and the prose so typical of him. But even as Ghosh sought to re-create the life of his Indian predecessor, he found himself immersed in those of his modern Egyptian neighbors. I kept expecting them to be tied together, but they never were. So that when he writes about the those other people, the merchants and slaves from years ago, whose correspondence he is researching, the vast gap in time is bridged by the ancientness and continuity of the Egyptian civilisation, and those people from a thousand years ago suddenly seem as real and alive to you as the fellaheen of today. Get A Copy. The locals never really understood what he was doing there, but most of them accepted him and he was able to observe their lives and beliefs. There are several stories. Paperback , pages. At that moment the only thing I knew about my future was that I was expected to do research leading towards a doctorate in social anthropology. Books by Amitav Ghosh. Ratings and Reviews Write a review. I am not sorry that I listened to this tale. Now, how do these stories come together? I was a student, twenty-two years old, and I had recently won a scholarship awarded by a foundation established by a family of expatriate Indians. Obviously, these questions are not really questions; their answers are already known to those who pose these questions. In an Antique land for me was a very different experience Friend Reviews. The book has been awarded with , and many others. The journey took him to a small village in Egypt, where medieval customs coexist with twentieth-century desires and discontents. The book was published in multiple languages including English, consists of pages and is available in Paperback format. That changes about half-way through the book, however, when he begins to push back from becoming a stereotyped expatriate, and describes an incredibly vivi This turned out to be a really lovely book. Similar books you may find of interest. It is only the masses who really buy these distortions at face value, and very often get manipulated. Ghosh discovered the Ben Yiju story by examining documents from the massive haul found in the Geniza synagogue document repository of the Palestinian synagogue in the Egyptian town of Fustat. And in terms of craft, this is really the best kind of rag-tag storytelling, founded in the way conversations with people actually work: how you mention something and then have to qualify it with an explanation before finally weaving back. And we also see, in Ghosh's picture portrait of Egypt, a land locked in time. Welcome back. He lived in small villages and immersed himself in the language, culture, and history of the area. View more. Start your review of In an Antique Land. There is a subtle critique of imperialism in the last pages, when Ghosh laments that the honest trading ways of the Malabar coast was what made it easy game for the European powers that would arrive to pillage, and forever end the era of trade, tolerance and peace that Bomma was part of.