Christopher de Bellaigue

You know those hacky history documentaries where there are lots of reenactments featuring actors in cheap costumes? Imagine if HBO decided to make one of those—so lots more gore and T&A—and then someone wrote the novelization of what results. That's what The Lion House read like. I'm not sure what Christopher de Bellaigue was aiming for with this "narrative nonfiction" take on the world of the Ottoman sultan Suleyman the Magnifcent: what was the point of this approach? It's too confusing, too lacking in a central thrust, too cavalier with the sources, to succeed as a work of history; too flat in its characterisation and too meandering in its POVs to work as something more novelistic. The prose is often clunky, trying and failing for pithy aphorisms (One section begins "Piracy isn't about sinking ships or winning battles. Piracy is burglary when the owner is out." Huh?) or edginess ("A fuck-off statement has come up over the Byzantine vaults on the northern side of the Hippodrome." That is just a weird way to describe a palace.)… (lisätietoja)

In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs made me want to travel through the Middle East if only to see the Rose Garden of the Martyrs, the seven thousand graves, each with a photograph of the dead man buried below. That must be an impressive sight.
Through riding in a taxi and listening to the radio De Bellaigue offers up a snapshot of current events: Saddam's activities burning oil wells in Kuwait, Colin Powell's outward facing response to send more troops in aground campaign without telling the public what that really means. And speaking of taxis, what is it about taxi drivers? They are by turns an opportunity for confession and a source of information. There are little Easter egg surprises within In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs. The mini explanation of Rumi's birth into the world of poetry was one such treasure. The personal details of how De Bellaigue met and courted his wife, Bita. Speaking of De Bellaigue's wife and in-laws, I had to wonder how his personal life with them altered his journalistic approach to writing In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs. The language was far more introspective and dare I say romantic?… (lisätietoja)

Interesting take on writing history. Tells parts of the stories of key monarchs and advisers in the era when the Ottomans were moving into southeast Europe in the 16th century.
The writing style is clearly not academic - with a very relaxed and informal presentation. This should make the content more accessible to the lay reader, but the author throws in a plethora of arcane terms for the titles of local nobility and military terminology. I spent more time in Google than I would have liked. My personal favourite was "maniple" for a small unit of soldiers. The dictionaries I checked indicate the term has not been used since ancient Roman times. Couldn't the author have used unit, troop, or some other term??
I learned about the life and times of Suleyman the Magnificent, but I could have enjoyed the journey more.… (lisätietoja)

In these frankly, traumatic times where various parties are taking more umbrage at each other’s point of view and the language is becoming more provocative one of the accusations levelled against the Muslim world is that they are failing to adapt to a modern world and modernise their culture. This has not always been the case though, as back in the nineteenth century the Muslim world embraced change and modern practices, medicine and universal suffrage. In this book on the Islamic Enlightenment, de Bellaigue goes back over 200 years to take us through the history of the region and the politicians, scientists and writers who have been key to driving the change in the region.

This is not a book you can rush, as de Bellaigue takes enormous pains to find the movers and shakers who drove through the change in this Muslim world and tell their story. It is full of complex tales and he is equally critical of the Muslim countries and of the Western states that carved up the region for their own ends whilst using the local political leaders to continue to oppress the populace. The amount of research that has gone into this makes for incredibly dense prose and I found it quite challenging to read. I also felt that sometimes the narrative of the stories of the people got lost in the detail. Will probably become a standard text in its time, but it is possible more for the specialist rather than the general reader.… (lisätietoja)