In an Antique Land
IN AN ANTIQUE LAND BY AMITAV GHOSH
In An Antique Land is a very capturing and an educative chronicle of a traveler, Amitav Ghosh, who perfectly weaves Indian and Egyptian history into one single story spread across various time periods. As the contents of the book suggests, the novel is divided into six parts namely, the Prologue, Lataifa, Nashawy, Mangalore, Going Back and Epilogue. The story begins with the Prologue where Ghosh reads a “short article by the scholar E. Strauss, in the 1942 issue of a Hebrew Journal, Zion, published in Jerusalem” (Ghosh, 13). What led Ghosh to Egypt is the letter with the catalogue number MS H.6 referring to a slave. This letter was first written by a person named Khalaf ibn Ishaq then residing in Aden to a friend Abraham Ben Yiju living in Mangalore. It holds great significance because during the era of kings, queens and war strategies in Europe and England to the wazirs and sultans of Palestine, “ Khalaf ibn Ishaq’s letter seemed to open a trapdoor into a vast network of foxholes where real life continues uninterrupted” (Ghosh, 16). Ghosh is intrigued as to how this small piece of history of an insignificant human being at that time has survived through the ages. Later it was discovered that these documents existed only because they contained God’s name “Bismillah” on every page.
The next appearance of this slave happened only thirty one years later, again in a letter written by Khalaf ibn Ishaq addressed to Abraham Ben Yiju. Gosh came across this reference when he was researching through manuscripts while being a social anthropology student at Oxford in 1978. After this, Gosh began avidly learning more about the slave.
Being only twenty two years old, Ghosh, in this novel, comes across as a young, enthusiastic and sincere researcher learning Arabic in Tunisia to being placed a year later in a small village of Lataifa in Egypt and his journey going forward. Ghosh seems very passionate and emotionally attached to his work
In An Antique Land is a very capturing and an educative chronicle of a traveler, Amitav Ghosh, who perfectly weaves Indian and Egyptian history into one single story spread across various time periods. As the contents of the book suggests, the novel is divided into six parts namely, the Prologue, Lataifa, Nashawy, Mangalore, Going Back and Epilogue. The story begins with the Prologue where Ghosh reads a “short article by the scholar E. Strauss, in the 1942 issue of a Hebrew Journal, Zion, published in Jerusalem” (Ghosh, 13). What led Ghosh to Egypt is the letter with the catalogue number MS H.6 referring to a slave. This letter was first written by a person named Khalaf ibn Ishaq then residing in Aden to a friend Abraham Ben Yiju living in Mangalore. It holds great significance because during the era of kings, queens and war strategies in Europe and England to the wazirs and sultans of Palestine, “ Khalaf ibn Ishaq’s letter seemed to open a trapdoor into a vast network of foxholes where real life continues uninterrupted” (Ghosh, 16). Ghosh is intrigued as to how this small piece of history of an insignificant human being at that time has survived through the ages. Later it was discovered that these documents existed only because they contained God’s name “Bismillah” on every page.
The next appearance of this slave happened only thirty one years later, again in a letter written by Khalaf ibn Ishaq addressed to Abraham Ben Yiju. Gosh came across this reference when he was researching through manuscripts while being a social anthropology student at Oxford in 1978. After this, Gosh began avidly learning more about the slave.
Being only twenty two years old, Ghosh, in this novel, comes across as a young, enthusiastic and sincere researcher learning Arabic in Tunisia to being placed a year later in a small village of Lataifa in Egypt and his journey going forward. Ghosh seems very passionate and emotionally attached to his work