Synopsis
Barry Unsworth, a writer with an “almost magical capacity for literary time travel” (New York Times Book Review) has the extraordinary ability to re-create the past and make it relevant to contemporary readers. In Land of Marvels, a thriller set in 1914, he brings to life the schemes and double-dealings of Western nations grappling for a foothold in Mesopotamia (now Iraq) in the dying days of the Ottoman Empire.
Somerville, a British archaeologist, is excavating a long-buried Assyrian palace. The site lies directly in the path of a new railroad to Baghdad, and he watches nervously as the construction progresses, threatening to destroy his discovery. The expedition party includes Somerville’s beautiful, bored wife, Edith; Patricia, a smart young graduate student; and Jehar, an Arab man-of-all-duties whose subservient manner belies his intelligence and ambitions. Posing as an archaeologist, an American geologist from an oil company arrives one day and insinuates himself into the group. But he’s not the only one working undercover to stake a claim on Iraq’s rich oil fields.
Historical fiction at its finest, Land of Marvels opens a window on the past and reveals its lasting impact.
The Barnes & Noble Review
The past, William Faulkner wrote, is never dead and isn't even past. He might have added that the present, at least in fiction, is always present. Just as the past keeps creeping into our contemporary lives, so do writers and readers like to insinuate our current preoccupations into stories about what went before.
This kind of sly time-bending is a hallmark of the novels of Barry Unsworth. Born in an English mining village in 1930, he's the author, since 1966, of 16 books, many of which range across time and space from 12th-century Sicily (The Ruby in Her Navel, 2006) to the last days of the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century (The Idol Hunter, 1980). Like all fiction, Unsworth's historical novels both reflect on and are influenced by the age in which they were made. Land of Marvels returns to territory he has covered already -- Mesopotamia in the beginning of the 20th century -- while illustrating, through the story of an archaeological dig, the way time's layers "were jumbled up and the dawn of history confused with the day before yesterday."