Destiny Disrupted by Tamim Ansary

Full title 'Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes'. Really good book, I highly recommend and I think it would do the world a load of good if everybody read it, Muslims and non-Muslims alike.


First of all, let me say that I am a devout atheist, but that I have friends who are Christian and friends who are Muslim and friends who are Buddhists and Hindus and atheists and agnostics etc. etc. Basically, I look in a religious debates as an outsider and 99% of the time it sounds like everyone is spouting complete rubbish and not listening to each other. So it was nice to read a book as balanced and informative as Destiny Disrupted.


Ansary takes the reader from the birth of Islam and the life of the Prophet through to our post-9/11 world. All the major and many minor events in the history of the Arab peoples and Islam are covered, from the original khalifas (Mohammed's immediate successors and trusted followers) through the Crusades and the Mongol invasion, from the Abassids and Umayyads to the Turks and Persians, from Akbar the Great to Ahmadinejad, from the house of Ibn Saud to the Ottomans to the Secular Modernists, from Jamaluddin-i-Afghan to Osama bin Laden.


Not everything in this book sits comfortably; I'm British and a lot of the railing against European Colonialism touched a socially-conditioned nerve of mine, but every point that Ansary made about this was valid, and there was an equal amount of railing against Arab mistakes too. I didn't agree with everything in the book, and I wish that Ansary had touched a bit more on current conflicts, the rise of the Taliban and Muslim Brotherhood, etc, as well as the life of women in the Arab world. However, the book was balanced (between Arab and Western, and between 'moderate' and 'fundamentalist' Islamic sensibilities) and written wonderfully. Ansary has a real feel for the interconnectedness of events and a sensitivity to both the 'Middle World' and the 'West', having lived in both. Also, he's a pretty good story teller, making even the driest of religious doctrines readable and understandable to your average outsider. After reading this book, I understand so much better what the Islamic faith is about, what makes it different from and similar to Christianity, and how history has led our two civilisations to the conflicts that are now raging.

Ansary refrains from calling the current conflicts raging around the world and the events leading up to them as a 'clash of civilisations', instead making a convincing argument for calling them two mismatched world views. This isn't the only book to read on the subject of Islam, or the 'mismatch' of our two cultures, but it's a brilliant place to start, and I wish that more people would read it. Maybe that way we'd understand each other a little bit more.

The next book I want to see is a collaboration between both Western and Arabic/Islamic historians, comparing within the same book these two mismatched world views. If any historians read this....

PS

sorry about the layout at the moment, I know that I always hate it on blogs when the labels etc. aren't immediately obvious. Can't actually see why everything is at the bottom, Blogger seems to think it's at the side but is displaying it at the bottom. No idea how to fix this but I will investigate! ;)

The Passion of New Eve by Angela Carter

The second book by Carter that I have read. The basic story is that Evelyn is an Englishman living in a crumbling America. He treats his lover Leilah badly, and so is captured by a fertility goddess and forced to have a sex change, in order that he a) gets a taste of his own medicine and b) repopulates the world by getting himself pregnant. And yes, it is as weird and grotesque as it sounds.

The basic premise of the story (chauvinist pig gets turned into a woman so he sees how he likes it) sounded promising - profound but with room for some dark humour. But this story went off at completely the opposite direction to what I expected. In fact I was a little disappointed - it isn't the story I expected, and it isn't the story I would have written.

This being Carter of course, the book is full of vivid description, poetic and grotesque language, and enough symbolism to sink a ship. In fact I've decided taht the way Carter writes is not so much in terms of a coherent plot, but more a string of vivid and symbolic scenes strung together by common characters. If you want a plot, don't read this book. However, Carter's vision is vividly painted and if you want a profound and challenging read then this is the book for you.

The depiction of a crumbling America was perhaps my favourite part of this book. It is horribly described, the first thing Evelyn sees when he arrives in America is a man who has just been stabbed, and it gets more and more horrible as the book continues. However Carter's vision of America was very interesting and imaginative. Surreal, but interesting, and not incomparable with the worlds of Fitzgerald and Steinbeck.

In all I was disappointed with this book. Hard to explain why. I think it's because there is no subtlety about Carter's message. Instead of allowing the message to develop through plot and characters, she thrusts it down the reader's throat with heavy-handed symbolism and gore. I found the fertility goddess's chant (something along the lines of Oedipus this, Oedipus that, Jocasta Jocasta Jocasta!) among other aspects ridiculous and actually laughable. There is no subtlety here, absolutely none, and boy did I miss it! The understated vividness of Austen and George Eliot, the poetry of the Brontes, the real-world believability of Iris Murdoch, the sharply-observed and humourously constructed messages of Jeanette Winterson's work...Carter stands out against the canon of great female writers for her surrealist and unflinchingly hideous descriptions, but she lacks, despite the scholarly references peppering The Passion of New Eve, the intelligence and wit of other female writers past and present. I found her writing interesting when I read The Infernal Desire Machines of Dr Hoffman, but found New Eve hard to swallow.

I know it's simplistic but I rate this 4.5 / 10, and would only read it again if I were studying it!

Not that I've consigned Carter to the back of the bookshelf, mind, but it will be a while before I read her again of my own free choice.

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

This sci-fi novel is set in the future, when the US has become the state of Gilead, a religious dictatorship. The repressive regime is born out of the fact that only a small minority of women remain fertile. These women are the Handmaids, and are basically hired out to important men in order to procreate. If they fail to do this, or break the strict rules governing their lives, they can become Unwomen and be sent to the radioactive colonies, be hanged and displayed as an example, or maybe even be torn to pieces by fellow humans.

The novel is told from the point of view of the Handmaid Offred (literally, the woman Of Fred). She recounts details of her former life and family, which intertwine with the story of her present. Offred is manipulated by the wife of her Commander, the Commander himself, and finds herself drawn towards his chauffeur/butler/servant, Nick, all of which puts her life in danger. The structure of the book revolves between the past and present, and Offred's encounters with other characters, and there is a reflective section at the end of the book told from many years after the events of the book.

I enjoyed the book, although it's a disturbing story and one that describes certain events in grisly detail. Atwood writes in an unfussy, almost conversational tone, but paints her characters very persuasively and uses symbolism as if it were going out of fashion. I felt that some elements were rather anachronistic - the Compucheck, Compubank, etc. It was Compu-everything - and that some elements were quite obviously borrowed from 1984. Also the 'Historical Notes', the last and reflective part of the book, didn't, I feel, add anything to the story. In fact it detracted from it, in that the deliciously tantalising cliff-hanger at the end of Offred's story is explained away. I think this was added to explain how Offred's internal monologue could have been recorded, but to be honest this part was unnecessary and surperfluous.

In all, however, Atwood's characters and scenario were uniquely presented and uniquely uncomfortable to read. Definitely a book that makes the reader think, and one that, though disturbing, I thoroughly enjoyed. I will certainly return to this book. It has really freaked me out, but I couldn't put it down.

1984 by George Orwell

I know this is a 20th C classic but I have never read it before, nor any of Orwell's work for matter, and the only other science fiction book I have ever read is Never Let Me Go. So here are my thoughts about 1984, and maybe it will convince even those who have read it before to pick up this book again and reread it!

For those who do not know the story: Winston Smith lives in a totalitarian state ruled by the Party. Free thought, human emotion and even love are utterly forbidden, and history and truth denied and warped. Winston embarks on a dangerous love affair with the seemingly regime-loyal Julia, whilst attempting in his own small way to undermine the oppressive powers that govern every aspect of his life. Without giving too much away...it lands him in all sorts of trouble in a plot full of twists but also driven by a haunting inevitability.

I absolutely loved this book, and it amazes me how something written 63 years ago is still so terrifyingly relevant. Goldstein, the hate figure, is currently (or until recently) incarnate in Osama bin Laden. Telescreens are everywhere these days - in fact I am typing on one right now, and what's more, it has an undisguised camera facing me - and we even have portable ones that we carry round with us all the time. The News of the World phone hacking scandal show how these telescreens can be used to spy on us. I'm not a conspiracy theorist - well, ok, a bit, but hey, I'm young and revolutionary - but Orwell's vision of an utterly totalitarian future has so many frightening parallels to today. Even the world divided into the three superstates of Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia is not unrecogniseable. The UK is the only pro-American country in Europe, Europe and the US are terrified of China, India and Russia, and countries as varied as China, the US and Arab states seem to almost fight one another for control of Africa - which is kept impoverished and oppressed. The constant, ever-shifting war? Surely it has several parallels with the War on Terror. It's amazing that Orwell had such foresight back in 1948, and the fact that he was writing just after the Second World War - and had already seen a totalitarian Europe and a whole world at war - and could see no improvement in the future...it's astounding, it really is.

But apart from the continued relevance and frightening foresight of the book, Orwell just writes absolutely compellingly. The ominous inevitability of Winston's end, right from the beginning of the book - 'it would end in the Ministery of Love' - had me gripped. I read the book in stolen snatches, desperate to read on. The portrait of the word imagined by Orwell is beautifully and shockingly painted. The invented world - Thought Crime, Doublethink, Newspeak, the Telescreen, Ingsoc - is horrifyingly believable. Characters are complex and Winston's inner battles are pitched just right. The plot is a real driving force (its only digression is The Book, something which although a bit of a drag compared to the rest of it, but still fascinating). But even Orwell's use of language is absolutely brilliant. My favourite line, the one that stays with me, is when Winston is described as 'gelatinous with fatigue'. Gelatinous! Perfect, glorious description! It's thoughtfully, inventively, bizarrely written, the language straightforward and unfussy but also perfectly judged and wonderfully precise and descriptive.

In short, I loved this book. I haven't been made to think so deeply by a book since I don't know when. But as well as being a thought-provoker, and a political statement, 1984 has beautiful language and perfectly-paced plot to add to its list. And the ending - so inevitable, but utterly surprising. I'd give it 9.99999999999999999 recurring out of 10. The tiny decimal knocked off only because although I admire Orwell's vision, I hope it never becomes true.

Flo's Own...Poetry: Portrait of the Escapologist, in Macroscopic Quantum State

This poem came to me as a combination of Francis Bacon's painting, and a scene from The Terminator 2 when the Terminator melts, and the drops of liquid start trembling, moving and reamalgamating.

This led to some research into superfluids, photoisomerisation and macroscopic quantum state. All very scientific and I don't understand any of it, but it says what I want it to - 'superfluid' is full of soft slippery sounds, and is perfect for the movement of drops of liquid that I wanted to convey.

First draft, took 30 mins to write after research.