I'm a history nut -- a couple of months on India then a few on China...then on to Russia, etc. I'm nearly always reading a history book. I had this book in my wish list when my brother bought it for my birthday. A complete waste of his money and my time. Pedantic drivel of an author who deems himself reflective and his thoughts important...and who must love the sound of his own voice...going on and on... I, unfortunately, suffer from the concept that once a book is started it must be finished. So, 3/4 through the thoroughly forced read and still not a glimpse of the "Indian slave, name unknown, who some seven hundred years before had traveled to the Middle East." So I don't even know if he ever does make an appearance...and certainly don't care.

In an Antique Land was a unique book for me, as its two threads focus on a small town that I grew up in for the first 20+ years of my life and a Country that I have lived in for the last 3 years. So I had a unique connect with this book.

Not so suprisingly, the description of my hometown did not ring a bell as it focussed mostly on the town as it existed 800+ years ago. The description of rural Egypt created a veritable clang in my head as I kept thinking to myself "How true" or "Yes, I know someone who would have reacted the exact same way"

This is a book of non fiction. Amitav Ghosh chanced upon a letter between Abraham Ben Yiju, a Jewish merchant living in Mangalore, India, and Khalaf ibn Ishaq from Egypt, written in 1132AD. Part of this narrative focuses on Ghosh's search for more documents relating to Ben Yiju and part of the narrative tries to imagine the world that Ben Yiju lived in.

The other narrative in the book, covers Ghosh's stay in rural Egypt (Mashawy and Lataifa) and it was this section that I found infinitely more interesting and hence hope to pick up his book of essays The Imam and the Indian which promise to shed more light on this phase of his life.

It is in this second narrative that Amitav's gift of story telling is showcased, while in the first narrative it feels stilted, focussed on facts and doesn't flow as naturally. Blending history with a a current travelogue is an art perfected by William Dalrymple and sadly in comparison, Ghosh didn't match up.

While Ben Yiju did spend time in Egypt and his letters were written to people living there and most of the surviving documentation came from the Geniza Documents cache from the Ben Ezra Synagogue in the Coptic Cairo area of modern day Cairo and Fustat of Ancient Cairo, this is the only point at which the two narratives seem to meet. For the rest of the book, they just continue parallel to each other.

In the final chapters, when Ghosh heads out towards the tomb of a Jewish Saint in rural Egypt venerated by Muslims and Jews alike, I hoped it would bring about a meeting of the parallel stories, but unfortunately it didn't.

Both narratives on their own are great and very illuminating, I just didn't see the point of putting them together.

Its a great read for someone visiting the Fustat area or interested in observations/revelations from the Geniza Cache or life in Rural Egypt.

The book tells two parallel stories, one taking place in 1980-1990 when the author spends time in Egypt as a graduate student of anthropology; the other in the 12th century depicting the booming trade between the Middle East and India through the eyes of a North African trader based in Aden, Mangalore and Egypt. The latter, fascinating story has been reconstructed through painstaking archival research and study of surviving correspondence and documents from the time. Amitav Ghosh, a renowned Indian novelist, proves his skills as an Oxford-educated academic, as well as a keen observer of everyday life. He demonstrates how the peoples around the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean have long interacted in myriad ways. Ghosh brings out the big picture by focusing on the lives of individual people. This is an erudite book that brings past and present together in an intriguing manner.

It's hard to even explain what Amitav Ghosh is doing in his book. He has entwined together a multiplicity of stories: his own experience as an Indian ethnographer in Egypt, the experiences over time and space of the rural "fellah" Egyptian men with whom he lived, his exploration of the past through historical archives, and the stories he uncovers, of widespread movement and trade in the Indian Ocean prior to the arrival of the Portuguese and their monopoly of Indian Ocean trade in the sixteenth century.

All of these stories are continually moving through time and space and - somehow - he winds them all together. Although he doesn't use the jargon, his stories examine academic issues of diaspora and transnationalism. He uncovers a long history of movements and trade in the Middle East and Indian Ocean that precede European involvement, and then depicts the disruptive and continuing influence of European colonialism.

As he blends together his own story, the stories of the fellahs, and the stories of Medieval trade, he ties individuals to history - or as he says, he tells "history in the guise of a traveler's tale." in his stories of Bomma and the Egyptian fellas, he reflects on the 'little guys', swept around by the ebbs and flows of history, individuals made invisible in a historical crowd.

A great example of what storytelling and cultural critique can be.

The indian author came upon old manuscripts to traces of a juwish-arabian merchant of the 12nd century. He travelled into the Egypt of our days, takes residence in a small Arabian village, dives into the life of the locals and seeks fort he connection to the arabian middle ages with its lively cultural and economic relations.
Here the author tries to bring to a relationship the arabian-muslim and indian-hindu cultures, or rather make visible what was once related. A rare and strange undertaking!
It is also laudable when somebody like Gosh plies such a thing with such a fervour almost sacrificially. But for the author, himself a Hindu, it is only conclusive, after he had set this goal under the knowledge of the old manuscripts to explore the life story of the late merchant who swang between the worlds like the author himself.
The reader follows, hears a lot about the life style and life philosophy of the Egyptian Fellas. The author disposes of sufficient humour to set skilfully counterpoints to the at that time fertile interactions of the cultures, because the Fellas regard the Indian culture as backward. But their arguments show their own backwardness. The author can even renounce to take a position himself. So striking is the credo of the muslims a testimony of their ignorance and backwardness.

Well done depiction of Egyptian village life! And even believable! But the uneducated of other cultural circles do not show more interests or understanding for the others. For this intra-cultural clash, as well sympathy-courtship for humanity in the social intercourse, the author pays a high expense. I doubt that so many people are interested to hear what a certain Jewish merchant in the 12th century in Mangalore, South India had to do and if his mistress did well.

The subtitle "A journey into the past of the Orient" is correct, but awakens expectations that are not satisfied. The courtesy-book-recensions of certain magazines and news-papers are mere exaggeration. Widely the book is simply boring and this I say as somebody who has travelled a lot in the Orient and India.
An example is when he explains the custom of burial. The Fellas ask him why the Indians burn theirs. He answers, he does not know, it is just the custom and it was already the custom before he was born. He had nothing to do with it!
Typical Gosh! He does not take a position when it comes to ideology. Only once he is drawn out when India is called backward. No, India is superior to Egypt, has more bombs etc.

The idea for this book was good, the execution seems to be mostly not inspired. The book has to be for ingrained Orient-fans, - perhaps. At least the author seems to have researched very thoroughly. That deserves acknowledgement, but this is what a reader who does not want to read a novel expects.
Well done is the passage about the possession of the Malabar coast by the Europeans. The Indians only had the choice between resistance and submission, cooperation was not offered to them.
Incapable to compete in trade with only commercial means, the Europeans attempted to bring it under control with aggressions. They unleashed violence in dimensions unknown to the coast. Nothing much has changed one thinks rather often when reading the book.

Dr. Ghosh is a social anthropologist by training, and a gentle one at that. He is also a gifted writer and a masterful storyteller. At least that is the impression I have formed from reading this book.

The book is part travelogue, part history and part anthropology. These three themes have been interwoven carefully, much like the layers of a leavened bread. And then there are gems of insights, somewhat like raisins mixed in the bread. The effect is somewhat soulful, and leaves you wonderstruck, not just at the story he tells, but als the skill and craftmanship with which he tell it.

The pace is slow, like sipping a fine drink, and rolling it slowly around with your tongue to get the flavour. Several readers have found this annoying, but I did not. It did not cause any loss of interest, but had me coming back to the book over a week, waiting expectantly for the story to unfurl, and looking forward to that raisin.

The base story is about a Jewish merchant, who migrated to India in the middle of 12th century, married and lived there for nearly 20 years. He also acquired a 'slave', who serves as the opening gambit of the book.

Dr. Ghosh followed his (merchant's) trail, as a doctoral project and hence lived for several years in a village Egypt. This gave him an opportunity to juxtapose his own story with that of the merchant, and show how the cultures and religions of the region have moved apart and yet have remained intertwined. He also uses the narrative to share his views on modernity, technology, colonisation, war and how it affects all our lives.

I found that the insights which he helps you get are very special - for instance, the bewilderment faced by Indians in the face of European attempts to monoploize trade routues in the Indian Ocean, when for centuries trade had prospered through cooperation and not domination. Similarly, how his visit to an ancient tomb in modern Egypt could have the police after him, themselves bewildered at what an Indian could be doing at a Jewish/Muslim sacred place. Or that 'slave' is a multi-textured word, with different meanings and implications across history and places.

I have now been given to understand that his other books also have similar qualities, and I am keenly looking forward to reading these.

The Hardcover edition that I read has been published by Penguin India and is available only in the subcontinent. The binding and paper was good, and for once, there were no printing errors. The type-face is nice and large, and the book is very good value at Rs.495.

An excellent book, especially if you are interested in how the past continues to live with the present, despite changing all the time.

If National Geographic stories reconstructing a stone-age human from its fossilized remains dug out of the ashes of a volcano (such as in physical anthropology) fail to engage your fascination, chances are that this story will seem more academic to you than the home work assignment to watch History Channel. I am one such history-averse person and the book was too slow to start. However, I finished it with a renewed respect for social anthropology and its relevance to the world we live in. The way a story of a 12th century Egyptian trader can be relevant to the social, cultural, political and business of our times is hard to ignore and not take heed of. Besides, it is fascinating to learn how a small set of information sources with varying degrees of reliability can be connected like dots that reveal the story of a 800 year old human life in all its aspects.

Some of the revelations in the book that left me agape were: the rich history of trade between Indian and Egypt that made a lasting impact on the evolution of both countries and her peoples; the complex way in which the social temper and cultural identity of a country are entrenched in religion, thus making religion the primary tool for governing powers to achieve political and business goals in ways that are irreversibly divisive; the power of a united few with a disruptive agenda over the divided many with a peaceful one.

Apparently, this book is part of the course reading for anthropology students at UC, Santa Cruz (and possibly many other universities worldwide), as I found out from a student sitting next to me in the plane. However, Amitav Ghosh's extensive research goes beyond anthropology and throws light on relevant topics of today such as Iraq & the Middle East, the cultural divide between Jewish, Muslims, Christians and Hindus, the Indian identity, and the massive social changes that conservative rural Muslims are grappling with.

If National Geographic stories reconstructing a stone-age human from its fossilized remains dug out of the ashes of a volcano (such as in physical anthropology) fail to engage your fascination, chances are that this story will seem more academic to you than the home work assignment to watch History Channel. I am one such history-averse person and the book was too slow to start. However, I finished it with a renewed respect for social anthropology and its relevance to the world we live in. The way a story of a 12th century Egyptian trader can be relevant to the social, cultural, political and business of our times is hard to ignore and not take heed of. Besides, it is fascinating to learn how a small set of information sources with varying degrees of reliability can be connected like dots that reveal the story of a 800 year old human life in all its aspects.

Some of the revelations in the book that left me agape were: the rich history of trade between Indian and Egypt that made a lasting impact on the evolution of both countries and her peoples; the complex way in which the social temper and cultural identity of a country are entrenched in religion, thus making religion the primary tool for governing powers to achieve political and business goals in ways that are irreversibly divisive; the power of a united few with a disruptive agenda over the divided many with a peaceful one.

Apparently, this book is part of the course reading for anthropology students at UC, Santa Cruz (and possibly many other universities worldwide), as I found out from a student sitting next to me in the plane. However, Amitav Ghosh's extensive research goes beyond anthropology and throws light on relevant topics of today such as Iraq & the Middle East, the cultural divide between Jewish, Muslims, Christians and Hindus, the Indian identity, and the massive social changes that conservative rural Muslims are grappling with.

I found this book extremely dry and slow moving. All the other reviews focus on the master-slave relationship. I kept waiting for this part of the plot to get moving, and it was 200 pages before it even happened. "The Hungry Tide" is a far better work by this author.

I had read this book few years ago , but recently I had a conversation with a freind about it. I just thought I would like to have a copy and read it again.
A book that I will recomend .

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. Although I have not researched in the Egypt I can relate to many research experiences of the author. It was a real treat for me. Martha B. Ashton-Sikora

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. Then it became clear to me. 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.

Amitav Ghosh has for long being a favorite - for his simple and lucid style of writing as well as his wordplay when describing the swirling moods of a changing landscape. He is at his most competent In an Antique Land.

Read the book for the sheer joy of the language if not for the appealing nature of the story.

The narrative weaves between Ghosh's account of a year spent living in modern-day Egypt; and the second storyline, his reconstruction of the fascinating life of a medieval Jewish Arab merchant who travelled to India, married a local woman and settled there.

If those sound like distant and obscure tales, it's a tribute to Ghosh's prose that he makes the reader quite attached to both yarns, and keeps you wondering how they will turn out. Great stuff!

The narrative weaves between Ghosh's account of a year spent living in modern-day Egypt; and the second storyline, his reconstruction of the fascinating life of a medieval Jewish Arab merchant who travelled to India, married a local woman and settled there.

If those sound like distant and obscure tales, it's a tribute to Ghosh's prose that he makes the reader quite attached to both yarns, and keeps you wondering how they will turn out. Great stuff!

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)

I loved this book, it is a great book, very well written, very entertaining; you'll learn about the egyptians (villagers) their colorful lives, culture, traditions, religious and cultural ceremonies. You will also learn about India, the old trade,and culture. Jews in the arab world, old synagogues and much more.

interesting insight into several cultures -- Egyptian, Judaic and Indian. a well written book, the author gets inside his characters heads. I took it with me when I visited Egypt in October 2001.

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.