Michael J. Sant

More like 4.5/5. Highly recommended epistolary novel showing the progression of the Byzantine-Arab wars of the 9th century through a cache of letters and a journal given to a 12th-century historian as source material for a history he is writing. All this is supposedly from the archives of the Kaspax family who had written many of the letters: a father, Damian; his two sons, Alexander and Cosmas; a grandson, John. There are also documents from clergymen, and various bureaucrats both Arab and Byzantine. My last attempt at reading an epistolary novel greatly confused me. This was a "group read" I couldn't even get into far enough, so didn't even count in my total, after reading 10 pp. or so. Letters from Melite was set up well--correspondence between an abbot and the historian, setting up the story and then dividing each of five chronological parts. Each was set chronologically in the reigns of five Byzantine emperors from Michael the Stammerer to Leo the Wise.

I was able to follow the whole narration of events, plus the personal lives of the Kaspax family. I felt the best parts were the siege of Syracuse on Sicily and the final siege and fall of Melite [Malta], the latter recorded in detail in John's journal. The novel gave a good picture of that era and the Kaspax family became living, breathing people. I felt there were no variations in the writing style from person to person; even word choice was often the same. John, as a boy, starting his journal under his tutor's instructions, wrote like a serious grown-up. Well, the Muslims did insert some of their religious formulae. I wondered about the controversy about icons; it was my understanding that iconoclasm had been forbidden during an Ecumenical Council in the 700's A.D. [787?], unless there were pockets of resistance to the directive while Christians still ruled the area.… (lisätietoja)