The Wonder of Different Cultures and Religions -- People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks

Photo: from the book's Wikipedia page

This is a book of historical fiction about a real Jewish book, saved, during the real bombing of a real museum in World War II, by a real Muslim. The real Muslim was a real librarian in Sarajevo, Bosnia, and he really saved the Sarajevo Haggadah, twice, from the Nazis.

If you've read my blog before, you undoubtedly see where I'm going with this. I'm not very subtle when I'm angry. (Or, when I'm not.) 

People of the Book is a novel in many parts, in many POVs. Normally that irks me, but it's handled very well here, as you'd expect it to be, since Brooks wrote it. The story starts in 1996 Sarajevo and ends in 2002 Sarajevo, but it also jumps around to other countries and continents, in other times, as far back as 500 years ago. It's a book also of many cultures, including those of Sarajevo (Bosnia), Africa, Spain, Italy, Austria (Vienna) and Australia, to name a few. It's also a book of many religions, including Catholic and Muslim. In the end, an Aussie falls in love with a Bosnian. I don't know if Europeans move around a lot more in Europe than Americans do in America, or if I've just seen too many James Bond and Jason Bourne (notice the similar initials) movies and read too many books. But it sure seems that way. There seems to be less fear and more acceptance because of this.

You're probably seeing where I'm going with that. I apologize for my lack of subtlety.

Turns out, most people of most faiths and cultures are peace-loving people, running from wars and oppression and ignorance. That includes Catholics, Hebrews and Muslims. But people of most faiths also start wars of oppression and ignorance. In this book, those people are also Catholics, Hebrews and Muslims. These faiths have works that go back millennia. The Sarajevo Haggadah, the book of the title, is one of those. It was created with love and honor and faith by someone (actually at least two someones, as one drew and another wrote) who tried to create a masterpiece to honor the faith.

Brooks's book has one overall message: culture and books should prevail over wars and ignorance. And the first sign of oppression and evil is the suppression, and burning, of books. Keep a watchful eye out for that. Nazi Germany wasn't the first killing tyranny to burn books, but doing so is the first sign of an ignorance and an oppression. That, and shutting down the press and universities.

Keep your eyes open for that, no matter where you are.

Many hands have undoubtedly touched the Sarajevo Haggadah, which is a very real book, as many hands undoubtedly have created it. This is the case of all old books.

Yes, all of them. Many hands will create many errors, especially in print, especially if the words have been created and put together over many centuries. If you've read my blog, you probably know where I'm going with that. If not, read the book, and you may.

Of all the sections of Brooks's book, she is at her best in those of historical fiction. The most memorable to me is the section of the book's travels out of World War II. There's a scene on a frozen lake that you won't soon forget. The part about the writing of the Haggadah is also great. So is the section about the real signature and inscription, and the fictional wine and blood stains.

Less great are the parts of the main character, Hanna, necessary to set the outline of the novel. She is asked to restore the book, as it's many hundreds of years' old. While doing so, she notices missing silver clasps, a butterfly's wing, a white (cat's) hair, a drop of wine, and another drop of what turns out to be blood. There's also a signature and inscription by a censor of the Inquisition--a real guy named Giovanni Domenico Vistorini. All that is known about this real man is his signature and inscription; other books from the Inquisition also have his name and notice. He had surely not signed hundreds of other books, many of them old even by 1609, thereby fating them to the flames. This one he let live--a strange book for an Inquisitor to pass. You'll have to read Brooks's book to see why.

So this is a great, literate book, about a real book, and the message is that books and cultures are cool. It's got a Travelling Pants kind of frame--Remember the movie with different segments about characters who all come across the same pair of pants? (Well, I didn't read the book or see the two movies, either, but I'm aware of the writing frame.) If not, how about Cat's Eye?--that really works here, even if Brooks is obviously more at home with the historical fiction parts, and less proficient with Hanna's modern day. She tries to hard, IMHO, to portray a sassy and independent Aussie. I found what she did for a living more cool than her character. That's just me--though she does have a memorably Lady Macbeth-like surgeon mother, who admits a whopper at the end.

Ultimately I prefer Brooks's March and Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague, but this--her third book--is also a wonder of a sort, and well worth your time. Though I think it's her third best at the time of its writing, it's still better than the best of most, including your humble reviewer. Actually, a piece of this gave me inspiration for a book I'm writing, that also takes place over many generations, with many characters, nations and problems. My book didn't have a MacGuffin--which is essentially what the Haggadah is here--nor did it have a Citizen Kane-type narrative frame, which is what Brooks's book is. The stains, the inscription and signature, the hair and the butterfly wing--they're all Rosebud, get it?

Knowing different cultures and religions makes you smart. They are not to be hated, oppressed or expelled. See where I'm going with this?!?

A Warning About A Society's Purge and A Book Review

Photo: the paperback's cover, from it's Goodreads page

Vienna Secrets by Frank Tallis is a very good book, #4 in the series, that was nominated for an Edgar Award in 2011. The mystery involves a few decapitated men, all in one way or another seen as enemies of Vienna Jews--the last one also being Jewish himself. There are the typical cast of characters, all of whom seem guilty in some way, until the real murderer shows himself towards the end. Max Liebermann gets out of that mess, solves the crime, solves a male patient's pseudo-pregnancy, and walks out of a meeting with his job--in that order. Once again, Tallis seems to show that the crime is second-fiddle compared to the more normal things his character has to go through.

But the real purpose of this book, as with the first three and the following two (I don't know why I've read them out of order, but it's not proven to be a problem), is to show the growing anti-Semitic dissension in 1903 Vienna. The subject is integral to the plot, to the characters, to everything. The book ends with the sadly ironic statement: "Today, Jews may be insulted and abused, but they will never be consigned to the flames again." This was supposedly written in Dr. Liebermann's journal in Vienna, 1903. Hitler, who was born in Austria on April 20, 1889, and who spent time in Vienna, was 14. Since he moved to Germany in 1913, he could plausibly have been a part of Liebermann's 1903 Vienna, but Tallis apparently decided--wisely--not to go there. But the irony of that sentence is impossible to miss.

I've harped on this before, in my other Tallis / Liebermann reviews, and Tallis himself has harped on this in every single Liebermann book, but I'll harp on it again: These books were written long before this last year's election cycle, but the warning is not subtle:

Beware of the makeup of your society, and beware who rules that society.

A country's leader is a reflection of that society, not the other way around.

A woman-hater, for example, cannot succeed in a society otherwise void of woman-haters. A xenophobe who fears / hates Mexicans cannot succeed in a society that does not otherwise fear / hate Mexicans. Though such an aspiring leader may lose an election by garnering "only" 30% to 40% of the vote, such a percentage is still alarmingly high and must be seriously addressed by that society. Simply put, that's a lot of fear and hate. Even if that aspiring leader goes away, the fear and hate-mongering that he flamed will not. It'll be there, and it could, and probably would, get worse.

It's happened before. Europe, 1890-1945. Spain and England have had Jewish purges. America has had a Native American purge. Think about it: If the current aspirant could wipe out those he hated, would he? Even his allies would say Yes. (In fact, that may be why they're his allies.)

So watch out. Beware of the makeup of your society, and beware who rules that society.

This book shows that was true in 1903 Vienna, and it shows it's true in 2016 America.

Beware. Keep your eyes open.

In the Wake of the Plague -- The Black Death and the World It Made

Photo: A Bubonic Plague map, from the Wikipedia page The Black Death in England.  This site quotes that up to half of England's population died of the plague in the Middle Ages, and another 20% later--and that doesn't count the last epidemic, the The Great Plague of 1666.


Fascinatingly in-depth, yet quick-to-read, take on everything Black Death.  This includes, but is not limited to:

--the biomedical facts of the Plague.  The memorable kicker here is that scientists have concluded, by digging up bodies of Plague victims in the frozen Arctic, that the Great Pestilence may have made about 10%-15% of today's descendants of Plague survivors immune to HIV, which causes AIDS.  This would've been certain by now, since the completion of the Human Genome Project, as this book was published in 2001.  The other memorable factoid is that anthrax was most likely killing off Europeans--especially the British--as the Plague was doing so as well, making London of the Middle Ages the worst place to be of all-time.  This explains why millions died in the winter--when rats and fleas are not abundant--and why millions died in the Frozen Arctic, where rats and fleas don't go at all.  Turns out, many of those people didn't die from the Plague--they died from anthrax.  And, why didn't many people have the tell-tale buboes and skin and blood lesions that Plague victims got?  And why did some people get struck by the virus one night and die before morning, which was unusual for Plague, which took days or weeks?  Answer, again: anthrax.

--social and economic aftereffects of the Plague.  In short, yeomen and women flourished, economically.  The Church was devastated and hired younger and more undereducated people, as the older but learned leaders died off. Serfdom ended. People questioned the infallibility of their monarchies (who were supposedly God-chosen and God-protected, but who during the Plague were God-forsaken) and of the Church, and of medicine.  After all, if the priests and friars and physicians couldn't save themselves, how could they save (spiritually and medically) anyone else?  And if they couldn't do that, what good were they at all?

--artistic expression.  Commonly thought to have become more morbid and pessimistic after the Plague, Cantor believes that art was going that way anyway, and that Renaissance art was less of a mirror of the Plague than previously thought.  I'm surprised by this, but Cantor is hugely respected, and he quotes many others, so I'll take his word for it.

--world government. The Plague spelled the end for the Plantagenets, which was a long-lasting monarchy and European power that you and I have never heard of. But they would've ruled England and Spain, and maybe, by default, France, at the time, which was a constant thought of every monarch for hundreds of years, but would've actually happened. But English Princess Joan, who was about to marry into the Spanish monarchy, died of the Plague (in France, at 15), and so that never happened. This led to the trials and tribulations of Edward II and III, and of Henry IV-VI, and, well, the rest is history.

--medical and scientific stagnation. These two things were just as much to blame as were the actual Plague and anthrax, as the vacuum of medical and scientific advancement in the Middle Ages (except in the field of optics) made these pandemics worse, and longer-lasting, than they necessarily had to be. Nobody knew or practiced anything that could've combated the Plague, so the main response was to pray, flee and blame--

--the Jews. The Plague wasn't the first time they were scapegoated, but perhaps this was the first European-wide excuse to massacre them, as entire villages, households and neighborhoods of Jews were set aflame and otherwise wiped out because the common man thought they were poisoning the wells, thereby creating and spreading the Plague. The first of many Jewish holocausts over the years.

In short, if you're interested at all in the Middle Ages, in the Renaissance, or in the Plague, this is necessary reading. An informative, well-written (and often sarcastic) account of the Plague, the people and the time.

Jesus, Mary and Joseph (and Pantera)

Photo: from Pantera's Wikipedia page at this link. "Tiberius Julius Abdes Pantera (c. 22 BC – AD 40) was a Roman soldier whose tombstone was found in Bingerbrück, Germany, in 1859."

Despite the title, the beginning of this blog is about the book The Lost Testament, by James Becker.

A really really really badly written book I read because of the premise and because I'm researching bestselling thriller authors.  But this was truly bad:

"Excellent," the emperor purred.  "Now summon help." (5)

"This is a private matter," he said.  "Kindly leave us."  (2)

That's Emperor Constantine, perhaps from the 60s Batman show.  But that dialogue is terrible.

Characters are always "suddenly realizing" things.  And I love this one:

"Instantly both figures froze into immobility beside the wall." (7)

If you freeze, of course you're also immobile.  And when a reader sees "instantly," he expects to see some kind of action, not a lack of action.

(And, yes, I realize I've quoted from just the first seven pages.  I did read the whole thing, and I'm tired and lazy, and it's 1:07 a.m.)

The lost testament of the title is shown only a few times in the book, and for some reason nobody seems in a hurry to translate it.  People associated with it are dying all over the place, and the flaps tell us the real document it's based on, yet we're not told what the document in the book says until the very last few pages.  I'll ruin it for you: It says what the flaps say the real thing says.  Ugh.

There's an ex-husband and ex-wife team, but they don't seem excited or scared about anything, and neither's smart enough to be another Robert Langdon.  Chris Bronson (not Charles Bronson) is an ex-cop, but he doesn't seem to know the laws of anything.  It's unclear if he's on vacation, on sabbatical, or on suspension.  He doesn't seem to know where he is much of the time.  Angela Lewis is a historian, but she hates dating things, especially old jars, and she doesn't seem terribly interested in the document, which could blow the lid off the Church and make blowhard politicians in the American South rather unhappy.  (This is actually hinted at in the book.)  The author and characters seem to be British, but you only know that because British towns are frequently mentioned, and words like "tram" and "lift" are used.  Yawn.

Though most of this book takes place in and near Vatican City and Cairo, none of that is described.  The Vatican isn't described.  Neither is Rome, or any city in Egypt, or the document itself.  Later the book takes place in Portugal and Spain, but you only know that because the characters say so.  Bleh.

The document in question, for real, is much more interesting than this book ever hopes to be. It's a document of a trial, supposedly written by a lawyer-ish guy. The trial is of a Roman soldier, a certain Panthera (or Pantera) who has raped a local woman, and impregnated her.  Raping your captives during times of military occupation or war was a crime then like it is now (though it happens all the time now, and I'm sure it also did then.)  Anyway, Panthera is on trial for this rape, and the document insinuates that he's clearly guilty, and witnesses are produced to prove it.  This would often lead to the rapist's death, as the military, then and now, wants to show it's in charge of its own soldiers. However, then as now, such things are hushed up.  In this case, he was found not guilty.

Photo: from Pantera's Wikipedia page at this link. "Tiberius Julius Abdes Pantera (c. 22 BC – AD 40) was a Roman soldier whose tombstone was found in Bingerbrück, Germany, in 1859."

All of this refers to the Pantera Rape, which if you don't know, [if you're a severely religious Christian, you might want to bow out here] is the story that Mary was not impregnated by the Almighty, but (as alleged by a man named Jerod of Cana) by a Roman guard named Tiberius Iulius Abdes Pantera (or Panthera), who rapes her.  (Or it's consensual, as was the belief at the time, for those who believed this to begin with.  Scholars have complained for years how the many Marys of the Bible seem to be confused with each other--not good, if one is the mother and the other a reformed prostitute.)  At any rate, a Yusef bar Heli (Joseph) of around Tzippori (a town in Israel attacked by the Romans in 4 BCE; notice the similarity to Moses's wife, Zipporah) is upset with her (and not the Roman archer, per se) because she's pregnant, (and no longer a virgin, nor a woman first taken by her husband). And so, as she's now considered defiled, he turns her out, and she gives birth to Jesus in the middle of nowhere.  She would've been barely in her teens at this point, perhaps 11 or 12.

This is actually not a new story, as this book and my research point out.  It may even pre-date many of the Gospels.  An ancient writer / philosopher, named Celsus, was the first to fully write of this, but a great many others did soon thereafter.  Celsus and the others say this story was widely known during their day, and during the days of the Disciples.  Celsus's work, titled The True Word [or Account, Doctrine or Discourse] is lost, but much of it is quoted by Origen, about a hundred years later, so he can refute it in a book of his own, which is called Against Celsus [Contra Celsum].

Whether you accept this or not, this is already more interesting than a book written by a guy who's watched too many bad 50s beefcake gladiator epics and bad 90s cop shows, right?

A few points:

--Celsus (who was clearly biased and anti-Christian), in about 177 A.D. (when the Christians were being persecuted in Rome, and long after Jesus and Paul and the others had died), said, in defense of his belief, that the original Christians were maybe a little confused. He gave examples:

--If Jesus is born as an infinite God, why would an angel warn Joseph and Mary and Jesus to hit the road before Herod kills Him?  Furthermore, wouldn't God, His Father, be able to protect Him from Herod, a finite human?

--How can an immortal man die, on the cross or otherwise?  If you're resurrected, you've died first, by definition. Literally, not figuratively. Like how Lazarus had to die first, by definition.

--It's said that Joseph and Jesus were carpenters.  But Jesus is also said to have taught at a synagogue.  Would the Jewish leaders let a carpenter from a tiny backwater teach at the synagogue?

--If not, then the word in this document attributed to Jesus and Joseph being carpenters (vulgar Latin "naggar") could mean its other connotation: "craftsman." As in, a "craftsman of words," perhaps.  Like I would be a wordsmith, but not a blacksmith, today.  But, either way, a "craftsman."

--Why didn't His disciples fear Him as a God?  Instead, one betrays Him, one doubts Him, and another perjures Him.

--And why didn't they cease these actions, if they thought of Him as a God?

--And if they didn't think of Him as an infinite God, who else ever would?

--Celsus mentioned it was commonly known in his own time (and that of the previous 80-100 years of the NT) that the Bible had been "corrupted from its original integrity" and "remodeled" to try to explain discrepancies or paradoxes in the text.  I'll provide an example from the OT: "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" and "Thou shalt not kill."  Can't be both, right?

--If Jesus is descended "from the first man, and from the kings of the Jews" then why are Joseph, Mary and Jesus seemingly unaware of their "illustrious descent?"  If I'm descended from Adam or from King David, I'm always going to know it, and I'm going to let it be known.  Several times.

--"After so long a period of time, then, did God now bethink himself of making men live righteous lives, but neglect to do so before?"  I've pointed this out before: Since the first man walked, why would just one Savior appear only at that one time in human history?  Why not also at any other time thousands of years before--or about 2000 years since?  The OT is at least 3,000 years old, and the NT is about 2,000 years old.  A novel-in-progress of mine now is about a small group of people who attempt to write their own Bible.  "It's overdue," one of them says.  "It's time," says another.

--Celsus is amongst the first to point out that the Bible uses the word "day" before the heavens, the sun and the Earth are fully created.  Without all three in existence already, there is no "day."

--As I've also mentioned: Why does God need to rest?  "After this...He is weary...who stands in need of rest to refresh himself..."

Lastly, one of my preferred beliefs: "One ought to first follow reason as a guide before accepting any belief, since anyone who believes without first testing a doctrine is certain to be deceived."

Indeed--How strong is an untested belief?

Anyway, whether you're with him or not, it's more interesting to research the Pantera / Mary document than it is to read this book.  So read the Bible, and read Celsus, and Origen, and ponder all this stuff, and don't waste your time reading Becker's book.

In fact, the book didn't make me want to know more about this stuff. Dan Brown's books (not masterpieces, either) do make me want to know more about the Vatican, or the Louvre, or D.C., or Da Vinci or Michelangelo and The Last Supper, and---Yeah, I had to supply the interest with this one.

The only kudos here to Becker is that he brings up the document to begin with.

When Plague Strikes: Blame and Bias

 

Photos: Pieter Bruegel's "The Triumph of Death," and an AIDS victim, from this link: http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/photos/plague/#/plague-painting_3338_600x450.jpg

This book is an excellent primer for anyone interested in plagues.  I read this to research The Gravediggers, and while it didn't teach me anything new (except exact names and dates), it does put many of my novel's themes in the same place for ease when I'm writing.

Essentially it focuses on the social, political and historical aftermath of the plague outbreaks.  I like that it groups AIDS together with the Black Death, as my novel does, and that it connects the social biases at the times as well.  My novel does that, too, but it's nice to get reinforcement of your ideas.

When the plagues hit, nobody understood them, and so many prevailed upon the bias of the time to find scapegoats.  But, really, if allowed to hate and maim, certain people will be happy to do so, regardless of the circumstances surrounding their actions.  And so:

From the chapter "Looking for Scapegoats" re: the Black Death:

"In 1213, Pope Innocent III decreed that both sexes, from age seven or eight, had to wear circular badges of yellow felt that identified them as Jews..."  The book then draws the parallel between those badges and the ones forced upon the Jews by the Nazis almost 600 years later.

"According to the rumors, the Jews were polluting the wells in the Christian communities with poisons imported from Moorish Spain and the Far East.  If Christians drank water from the wells...they would be infected with the plague and die..."

"...the rumors led to eleven Jews being put on trial in September 1348.  They were charged with having poisoned the wells in a small south German town.  After hours of painful torture, the eleven confessed to the deed and said they had received the poison from a rabbi in Spain...

"...In January 1349, the two hundred Jewish residents of Basel, Switzerland, were herded into a wooden building on an island in the Rhine River and burned alive..." (Giblin 36-7).

There's much more, but you get the idea.  (I don't know why I was surprised by Switzerland's involvement, considering its history of neutrality, but I was.)

Though the Native Americans were not blamed for causing smallpox, colonists and Europeans were quick to use it against them.  The most infamous was Sir Jeffrey Amherst, commander-in-chief of British forces in North America, who was unwise enough to put it in writing.  This was sent to a colonel:

"Could it not be contrived to send the smallpox among these...tribes of Indians?  We must on this occasion use every stratagem in our power to reduce them."  The colonel's response: "I will try to [infect] the Indians with some blankets that may fall in their hands..."  Amherst's enthusiastic response: "You will do well to try to infect the Indians by means of blankets...as well as to try every other method that can serve to extirpate this execrable race" (Giblin 86-7).

The British and the colonists were so happy with the results that Amherst, Massachusetts was named in his honor.

Those of my generation remember the bias against homosexuals when AIDS made its appearance here in the early-to-mid-80s.  I do specifically remember (unfortunately) some diatribes by Pat Buchanan and Jerry Falwell.  So, too, apparently, did this book's author:

"The conservative columnist Patrick J. Buchanan wrote, 'The poor homosexuals--they have declared war on nature, and now nature is exacting an awful retribution.'...

"In a statement that sounded remarkably similar to some made by clergymen at the time of the Black Death and during early smallpox epidemics, the Rev. Jerry Falwell said: 'When you violate moral, health, and hygiene laws, you reap the whirlwind.  You cannot shake your fist in God's face and get away with it."

And it hasn't always been just the clergy, or the conservative.  Haters will hate, if just given a cause to hate about:

"Wielding baseball bats, the youths rampaged through a public park frequented by gays.  They shouted 'diseased queers' and 'plague-carrying faggots' as they beat up every man unlucky enough to be in their path.  After his arrest, one of the attackers tried to defend his actions.  'If we don't kill these fags, they'll kill us with their f---[ing] AIDS disease,' he said" (Giblin 135-6).

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

What will the next plague be?  And who'll be blamed and persecuted for it then?

My guess: Ebola.  Who'll be prejudiced against for it?  We'll see.  Hopefully not brown-eyed little Frenchmen, but who knows?

Javier Sierra--The Secret Supper and The Lady in Blue

Photo:  The incorrupt body of Venerable María de Jesús de Ágreda in the Church of the Conceptionists Convent (in Ágreda, Spain).  Photo taken from Maria de Jesus de Agreda's Wikipedia page.

Javier Sierra is probably one of the more successful authors, world-wide, who you've never heard of.  I've only read two of his works; they may be the only two of his translated into English.  They're reviewed below.

The Secret Supper

No Da Vinci Code redux, as a commenter inside says, and it's true.  Very good book about everything associated to its time.  A bestseller in 35 countries, this book delves into the characters more than Code, with just as much suspense and with just as many cliffhangers.  And the added bonus of historical accuracy and a You-Are-There feel.  Sierra has yet to repeat this success, unlike Brown and Angels and Demons (which might be better than Code).  This is a worthwhile book and intelligent escapism.

The Lady in Blue

Disappointing, but not terrible.  Made me want to see images of the nun who, though in her crypt, still looks alive.  Very, very creepy.  Interesting question about how the true Americans knew the religion beforehand, though I can think of other, more plausible, answers.  Very second-rate compared to Sierra's own The Secret Supper, and sometimes kinda bland.  He'll do better.  Very successful book, translated into 23 languages, as was The Secret Supper.