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In an antique land

The author recounts his ten-year investigation into the life a twelfth-century Indian slave who lived in a remote corner of Egypt.

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http://schema.org/description

  • "The author recounts his ten-year investigation into the life a twelfth-century Indian slave who lived in a remote corner of Egypt."@en
  • "History in a guise of a traveler's tale."
  • ""Avec pour seul indice un fragment d'une lettre écrite au XIIe siècle par un marchand d'Aden à son ami et représentant à Mangalore, Abraham Ben Yiju, Amitav Gosh décide un jour de s'embarquer dans une remontée du temps à la recherche d'un esclave indien. Une enquête littéraire prétexte à une histoire."
  • "Overview: Once upon a time an Indian writer named Amitav Ghosh set out to find an Indian slave, name unknown, who some seven hundred years before had traveled to the Middle East. The journey took him to a small village in Egypt, where medieval customs coexist with twentieth-century desires and discontents. But even as Ghosh sought to re-create the life of his Indian predecessor, he found himself immersed in those of his modern Egyptian neighbors. Combining shrewd observations with painstaking historical research, Ghosh serves up skeptics and holy men, merchants and sorcerers. Some of these figures are real, some only imagined, but all emerge as vividly as the characters in a great novel. In an Antique Land is an inspired work that transcends genres as deftly as it does eras, weaving an entrancing and intoxicating spell."
  • "The story of two Indians in Egypt. The first was a 12th century slave; the second is Amitav Ghosh, who stumbled upon the slave in the margins of letters that were written by the slave's master. Moving between the present and the ancient past, between his own life and the slave's, Ghosh creates a multi-layered narrative that affords us not only an inkling of the slave's life, but also a unique understanding of the private life of the world that both he and the author came to inhabit."@en
  • "In an Antique Land is a brilliant hybrid, a subversive history in the guise of a traveller's tale. It tells the story of two Indians in Egypt. The first was a twelfth-century slave; the second is Amitav Ghosh, who stumbled upon the slave in the margins of letters that were written by the slave's master. His curiosity piqued - even ill-defined, the slave's presence in the records of medieval history was completely out of the ordinary - Ghosh journeyed to Egypt in 1980 to try to fill in the details of the slave's life. His search - which would last for ten years - began in a tiny village two hours from Alexandria where Ghosh found himself among people for whom 'the world outside was still replete with wonders of the unknown.' There was Abu-Ali, his gargantuan landlord; Khamees the Rat, the beady-eyed local wit; his adversary, the Imam; Zaghloul the weaver (once so obsessed with a girl that he spent his nights kneeling outside her window to listen to the sound of her breathing); and young, quiet Nabeel, who would be left stranded in Baghdad at the outset of the Gulf War. These were zealous Muslims who found him, a Hindu, fascinating but utterly incomprehensible. Yet they willingly became his guides as he sifted through fact and conjecture, piecing together the slave's journey from India to Egypt. Ghosh discovered an 'elusive and mysterious acquaintance' in the slave, with whom he seemed to share, across eight hundred years, the experience of dislocation, and who seemed to have given him 'a right to be there, a sense of entitlement.' And, moving between the present and the ancient past, between his own life and the slave's, Ghosh creates an exuberant multi-layered narrative, rich in detail and anecdote, that affords us not only an inkling of the slave's life, but also a unique understanding of the private life of the world that both he and the author came to inhabit."
  • "Author's account of his search for the life stories of a twelfth-century slave and his master."@en

http://schema.org/genre

  • "Autobiografické vzpomínky"
  • "Historické příběhy"
  • "Stories in English"
  • "History"
  • "History"@en
  • "Electronic books"@en
  • "Roman indien (de l'Inde) de langue anglaise"
  • "Anglicky psané příběhy"
  • "Autobiographical reminiscences"
  • "Historical stories"
  • "Belletristische Darstellung"
  • "Biography"
  • "Biography"@en
  • "Biographie (Descripteur de forme)"

http://schema.org/name

  • "Un infidèle en Égypte : récit"
  • "Ve starobylé zemi"
  • "في ارض قديمة : رحلة قصيرة بين الماضي والحاضر"
  • "In an Antique land"
  • "Se mia archaia chōra"
  • "Na prastarej ziemi"@pl
  • "In einem alten Land : eine Reise in die Vergangenheit des Orients"
  • "In an antique land"
  • "In an antique land"@en
  • "Fī arḍ qadīmah : riḥlat qaṣīrah bayna al-māḍī wa-al-ḥāḍir"
  • "Lo schiavo del manoscritto"@it
  • "Lo schiavo del manoscritto"

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