March 29, 2002
From the desk of Jane Galt:What I'm Reading this Week
What I'm Reading this Week
What with everything that's been going on in the Middle East, I'm reviewing a book out of turn. (The review of The Vote will come later today). It's not a book that I'm reading; it's a book I own, and would be reading if it weren't currently buried in a box deep in the dark recesses of a storage locker in Yonkers. It's Nelson DeMille's By the Rivers of Babylon and it may be the best modern thriller about the Middle East.
The book concerns a planeload of Israelis kidnapped on their way to a peace conference and forced down near Babylon. The plot is superbly paced, and the ways in which lightly armed passengers contrive to do battle with the terrorists who have kidnapped them provide a riveting backbone to the novel, but they are not its meat.
I love this book. I rarely re-read action novels, but this one is so compelling that it's earned a permenent spot on my bookshelf; I've re-read it at least a half-a-dozen times. The characters are both deft and deep, neither sinners nor saints and certainly not the cartoon superheroes who populate so many novels of this genre; but DeMille manages to achieve this without casting away the moral dimensions, no mean feat in a novel about war. The novel explores complex issues of war, peace, and personal responsibility without turning into a sermon with a cast.
The best thing about the novel, though are its evocation of the history of the Middle East and the ways in which ancient history plays out there still. The writing of these pieces is extraordinarily fine, from the history of the Babylonian Captivity, to the return of Jews today. Possibly the most frightening thing about the novel is that it was written about twenty five years ago, yet aside from a couple of slight historical anomalies (the age of holocaust survivors; some technical details about airplanes) you would never know it. This may offer a clue as to the future of peace in the Middle East.
Anyway, HIGHLY recommend it. It gets a coveted five star rating and an order to everyone who hasn't read it to go out and buy it today.
Posted by Jane Galt at March 29, 2002 10:36 AM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound links