I never read Amitav Ghosh before but heard about his novels like Sea of Poppies, River of Smoke etc. His genre is mainly historic fiction and travelogue.
In an Antique Land is one of his earliest non-fiction works, mainly records his stay in the hinterland of Egypt in the 1980s and his research on Jewish merchants and their Malabar/Mangalore connections. Throughout this book, Egyptians make fun of his culture, religion and customs by asking silly questions like -- "Does he burn his deads, does he worship cows, does he circumcise?" and Amitav Ghosh finds extremely difficult to explain the peculiarities of his faith and sometimes he becomes too apologetic about his faith to easy going but ignorant, parochial and insular Egyptians. In so many ways Egyptians in this book are similar to the rural Indians. Certainly ancient civilizations have some common genetic disorder.
I never thought that Misri (name of crystalline sugar in north India) is called after Misr (Arabic name for Egypt) in northern India. The two ancient civilizations that were so close 500 years ago are too distant now. Egyptians are completely unaware of any religion apart from Islam, Judaism and Christianity, and any tradition/culture apart from middle east culture, but on other hand they are very welcoming and friendly. Their ancestors were great traders and agile persons and one single family could have members living in Sicily, Aden, Egypt and Mangalore (as this book informs us).
Recommended (7/10)
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