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

As the reader quickly discovers, Ghosh in this book works with three narratives. One is a 'detective' story, albeit in the most scholarly of veins. As a student Ghosh recounts how he came across a reference -- one line -- to an Indian slave who worked for a Jewish master, Abraham ben Yiju. Who was this most marginal of historical personages, whose name emerges -- the time is 1148 AD -- "when the only people for whom we can even begin to imagine properly human, individual, existences are the literate and the consequential, the wazirs and sulatans, the chroniclers and the priests -- the people who had the power to inscribe themselves physically upon time...the slave of Khalaf's letter was not of that company: in his instance it was a mere accident that those barely discernible traces that ordinary people leave upon the world happen to have been preserved."

The detective search for more information on the slave, his owner, the world they both inhabited, leads Ghosh to Geniza of Cairo, a storehouse of Jewish documents which miraculously survived the destruction that seems to be the fate of most paper over the course of many centuries. The documents are themselves a diaspora in miniature: none remain in Egypt, being dispersed to St. Petersburg, Oxford, Cambridge, Philadelphia...and yet the book recounts how Ghosh tracks them down.

The second narrative requires Ghosh's novelistic gifts, as he attempts to reconstruct, from mere shreds of evidence, the life of Abraham and his slave. What results is a rich evocation of the way life was lived -- in Aden, Mangalore (India), Egypt, even Sicily and Yemen -- in the twelfth century; the life evoked is Jewish, Muslim, Hindu; it is Egyptian, Indian; it is mercantile, religious, familial. And it is, as stated, richly evoked.

The third narrative is one of Ghosh's life in rural Egyupt, as he works on his Ph.D. research by observing two small Egyptian farming communities. The focus here is seldom on Ghosh: although a memoir, it is primarily an evocation (another one!) of Egyptian life in the relatively brief period after liberation from the British, and before modernisation transforms village life. Even though Ghosh keeps himself in the background, there is a continual counterpoint between his Indian/Hindu/educated background and the rural community in which he lives: a counterpoint which emerges not because of his self-consciousness, but because his Egyptian neighbors -- who become his friends, and even his extended family -- themselves continually question him about his Indian roots.

Each narrative sheds light on the other. There is a point to the triple narrative, the point of view which motivates almost all of Ghosh's writing: it IS possible for human beings to live together, to live together harmoniously despite differences in religion, culture, language. But the imperatives of modern society -- be they of the nation-state, of capitalism, of narrow self-interest, of imperialism, of the need for conquest -- close off the rich possibilities of harmonious co-existence to achieve narrower goals.

Lest this book seem dry, academic, moralaistic, let me hasten to say that wonderful treasures emerge so frequently (insights into other cultures, historical and present), and so seamlessly (for the boundaries of past and present, here and there, melt away in the measured cumulation of the three narratives) that the reader is likely to be, as I was, entranced, educated, and changed.


Unveiling the anecdotal history of the past   August 9, 2003
Matthew M. Yau (San Francisco, CA)
23 out of 24 found this review helpful

Amitav Ghosh's In An Antique Land is a hidden history of India and Egypt during the 12th century in the disguise of a traveler's tale. Amitav accidentally stumbled upon some letters of correspondence between Abraham Ben Yiju, a Jewish merchant living in India, and Khalaf ibn Ishaq from Egypt in 1132. In the margins of these letters Ben Yiju's slave Bomma was often mentioned in passing with a special note of affection. No sooner had Amitav discovered about Bomma than he, out of volition, ventured out to Egypt, sifted through fact and conjecture, through a large number of letters and manuscripts referring to the trade between the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean, piecing together Bomma's journey from India to Egypt.

In 1980, Amitav arrived in Egypt and over a span of five years he stayed in the villages of Lataifa and Nashawy. While Amitav diligently tried to fill in the details of the slave's life, whose record in medieval history was completely out of the ordinary, he befriended with enthusiastic Muslims who found him fascinating but incomprehensible. Amitav's landlord, Abu-Ali, was an obese, inimical, petulant man who was diligent in exploiting all moneymaking possibilities of his strategically located house. Shaikh Musa, who referred Abu-Ali obliquely to his avarice and acrimony, always watched out for Amitav and cautioned him to evade certain people in the village. Ustaz Sabry, a well-read history scholar who taught in Nashawy, and his students Nabeel, who aspired to work in the government but left stranded in Baghdad, Iraq at the outset of the Gulf War, cultivated with Amitav a friendship that later proven to be indomitable.

Amitav did not always meet the usual hospitality. To the eyes of Muslims for whom the world outside was still replete with wonders, a Hindu was uncivilized for the practice of "burning the dead". Villagers often stigmatized Hindus and admonished Amitav to civilize his country and people. Others attempted to convert him into the study of Quran. Even the children jeered at his lack of perspicacity in politics, religion, and sex. In one occasion, at the house of Imam Ibrahim, the healer and prayer leader of Nashawy, Amitav unwarily trespassed on some deeply personal grief that haunted the Imam and his family for years. The unfortunate and unintentional solecism incurred in the Imam an enmity toward Amitav.

In An Antique Land unveiled the mystery of Bomma whom Ben Yiju adopted into his service as business agent and later incorporated into his household. In unraveling the life of this Indian slave across some 800 years, Amitav deftly sheds light on the life of his master Ben Yiju and nature of patron-client, master-apprentice relationship in disguise of a master-slave one during the 12th century. The relics about Bomma was limited but the unexpected outcome of the search manifested a compendious picture of his master, Ben Yiju, who as a junior associate, partnered with a merchant Madmum. The letters between these two were full of instructions and certain peremptoriness prevailed beneath the usual courteous language. Madmum's warm and occasionally irascible tone suggested that Madmum regarded Ben Yiju with an almost paternal affection.

In An Antique Land delivers a tale of a quest that moves between the present and the past, between Amitav Ghosh's own life and the slave's. The narrative is rich in layers, cultural overtones, historical relics, and anecdotes. Readers will find arresting images of India and Egypt hidden under a deceptively plain surface of prose. 4.0 stars.

Matthew Yau (10Q_boi)


It Shouldn't Work!   May 30, 2000
Robert Simpson (NZ)
14 out of 14 found this review helpful

But it does! This book takes three part-stories, dry academic scholarship, adapting to life in a completely different culture and a slave in 12th century Egypt, that are each individually neither compelling nor fulfilling. Yet the sum of the three parts is both compelling and fulfilling. The narrative jumps from story to story skillfully, creating tensions in each story line that would otherwise be absent and drawing the reader onward. Amitav Ghosh is a wonderful writer of lyric descriptions and this book is lovingly fulled with them, adding embellishments to the otherwise simple stories. Everything comes together to produce a book as good as his Shadow Lines.


Incredible   May 8, 2000
12 out of 12 found this review helpful

This is a must read book. Ghosh somehow weaves together the history of Cairo, a traveling Jewish merchant, marginalization, the fate of 2nd world countries, and a diary of his time in Egypt-- and makes it really, lively, and relavant to anyone's life. and it is written in a lovely, lyrical style


a perspective rarely seen   September 30, 2002
Nacozari (all over the place)
12 out of 13 found this review helpful

what makes 'in a unique land' truly unique itself is the persepctive of the main character: how often do we get to read about the perceptions of a non-european/american traveler on a journey in a country that is not in europe or america? it is a rare vision to see through the eyes of an indian graduate student taken to egypt to research for his doctoral thesis. the whole basis of the novel is so utterly original, making it interesting to anybody who is fascinated by reading about intercultural experiences.

as an american living abroad, i have come across many great books about british travelers surviving south america or spain, and americans making it through africa and australia, but i had never before had the opportunity to know what a person from one part of the 'underdeveloped' world might have to say about another such country. surprisingly, the results were not too different: many of the protagonist's trials and tribulations reminded me of my own travels in another north african country, so my personal reading of the novel showed me how much we all share in common when going abroad, no matter what country we are from, yet obviously his experience was quite different in many ways as well. i truly enjoyed reading this novel.