Those who grew up on the poetic translations of the Odyssey by Robert Fitzgerald and Richmond Lattimore will be surprised, to say the least, at this new version of the “lost books” of the Odyssey by Zachary Mason. Both of those earlier translator/poets treat this epic as the monument of Greek culture that it is–a long poem from three thousand years ago intended to be sung by traveling bards as a way of preserving their culture and religion. Mason’s newly published version of this story, by contrast, takes a post-modernist approach–casual, playful, earthy, and even scatological. Using the traditional story of the Odyssey as his starting point, Mason gives his own take on various episodes from that epic, jumping around in time and place, changing major aspects of the story, adding new episodes, and providing unique points of view.
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The land of Mesopotamia, in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley, once boasted the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, among the Seven Wonders of the World. Highly developed ancient civilizations competed for power there four thousand years before Christ, leaving behind sites of immense archaeological importance as they defeated each other and formed new civilizations. In the modern era, Mesopotamia, now known as Iraq, fell under a succession of foreign rulers, and by 1914, when this novel opens, it was ruled from Constantinople by the Ottoman Empire, which was considered “the sick man of Europe” and ripe for overthrow. Iraq, a vast land of immense natural resources, is there for the picking– and it has no government of its own to interfere with potential exploitation by colonial powers. Virtually every country in Europe is on site, vying for oil, “the genie [that] will be the harbinger of a golden age,” and working to open the country to other business pursuits. Trying to ignore most of this turmoil is John Somerville, a thirty-five-year-old archaeologist who has been working for three years at Tell Erdek, an ancient site near Baghdad which has so far yielded little in terms of artifacts.
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Mary Renault’s great historical novel of Theseus begins when he is a young man in Troizen, a well-bred youth who has never known his father’s identity. When, with the help of the gods, he succeeds in lifting a stone to reclaim his father’s sword, Theseus discovers that he is the son of Aigeus, King of Athens. On his way to Athens to meet him, Theseus arrives in Eleusis, where after wrestling the king in a fight to the death, he finds himself, unexpectedly, the King of Eleusis. Renault tells the story of Theseus as if Theseus were a real person, not a mythical character, using history, archaeology, and a deep understanding of the cultures of the period to place Theseus in a realistic context. Her descriptions of the lifting of the stone, the wrestling match in Eleusis, Theseus’s arrival at the palace in Athens, and especially his experiences in becoming a bull dancer bring the period vibrantly to life in ways consistent with the historical record.
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Virginia Morell’s astounding level of research reveals paleontologists Louis and Mary Leakey individually, in their relationships with their family (also paleontologists), and as dogged searchers for the truth about man’s origins. Through letters, diaries, journals, personal interviews, and family archives, they Leakeys speak to the reader with unprecedented candor about their personal travails, but more importantly, about their early struggles for funding, their fossil discoveries in remote desert locations in Kenya and Tanzania, their constant surprise by the historical record, and their uncertainty, to this day, about modern man’s exact lineage. An absolutely fascinating family biography.
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In naming his novel Akhenaten: Dweller in Truth, Nobel Prize-winning author Naguib Mahfouz signals his belief that Akhenaten’s views of religion, the same views that led Akhenaten to be called the “heretic pharoah,” show him to be more a man of our times than a man of his own times. Akhenaten, formerly Amenhotep IV, changes his name to reflect his belief that Aten, the sun god, is more powerful than Amen (Amun), the traditional god of the Egyptians, the god served by a huge and powerful class of priests and recognized as the Most High by the large Egyptian population. Following a mystical revelation, however, he also comes to believe that there is a god even higher than Aten–One God, the Sole Creator, who was a god of love, forgiveness, and peace. In this respect, Akhenaten becomes a pharoah whose beliefs make him seem almost “like one of us.” The effects of religious change on his society show obvious parallels to the present day.
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Continuing the story of I, CLAUDIUS, which ends with his unexpected acclamation as Emperor of Rome, Robert Graves focuses less here on the genealogy and history of Claudius’s ruling family and more on the personal characteristics which enable great leaders to rule–and to fall. Claudius is hugely popular when he first becomes Emperor, refusing many of the numerous titles claimed by his predecessors because he believes he has not yet earned them. An unpretentious man who respects the people, Claudius hopes to improve their miserable lives and, one day, to bring about a genuine republic–at least at first. Gradually, we observe the truism that “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
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Published in 1934, poet Robert Graves’s I, Claudius tells the story of Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus, known in Roman history as Claudius–an historian, a crippled stutterer, and widely regarded as an idiot. Claudius is isolated from the treachery of the Roman court during the years immediately after the death of Christ, protected by the fact that no one takes him seriously enough to want to assassinate him. Through the first person narrative of Claudius, Graves tells the story from the beginning of the Christian era until Claudius’s death fifty years later, recording the horrors visited on the Roman people by his family’s rulers. Characters are complex, fully developed humans, instead of cardboard, costumed “ancients,” and their machinations, though extremely bloody, show the conflicts that occur when absolute rule and republican sentiments contend for dominance, a conflict in which Graves says he saw parallels to World War I and its aftermath. A brilliant novel which sets the standard for historical fiction.
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Fans of the Sherlock Holmes series may be as surprised as I was by the complete change of style that this novel represents for its author. Gone are the formulas, the formal language, the stilted dialogue, and the gamesmanship between author and reader that characterize the Holmes novels, however delightful and successful those may be as mysteries. Instead, we see Doyle letting his imagination run free in a sci-fi romp that is both fun and funny, and often thoughtful. Written in 1912, during an eight-year hiatus from his Sherlock Holmes novels, and six years after his last “historical novel,” The Lost World is the first of five works involving temperamental Professor Edward Challenger, a scientist investigating evolution and related subjects. This novel is set in the jungle of Brazil, where liviing fossils roam–and fly.
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