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Ebookwormy1's Reviews > Caravans
Caravans
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Clocking in at just under 340 pages, Caravans lacks both the heft and span typical of the generational saga for which Michener is known. This is not the best of Michener and it’s not my favorite, but I’m glad I read it after all these years.
What makes this book especially intriguing is its publication in the year 1963, and setting in the post-World War II Afghanistan of the late 1940s. The main character of the work is the land itself: Afghanistan. Beautiful and complex, Michener presents us with a land full of struggle and drops story into it. We become acquainted with Afghanistan’s aspiration to modern stability, feel the heat of the nation's steep in history, and cheer for it’s precocious steps to maturity. The time in which Michener published this work, the 1960s, were relatively stable and optimistic for Afghanistan, and setting the book 20 years prior allowed Michener to dramatize the people and events bringing about this ambitious adolescence.
“We went into the night and for the first time in my life I saw the stars hanging low over the desert, for the atmosphere above us contained no moisture, no dust, no impediment of any kind. It was probably the cleanest air man knows and it displayed the stars as no other could. Not even at Qala Bist, which stood by the river, had the air been so pure. The stars seemed enormous, but what surprised me most was the fact that they dropped right to the horizon, so that to the east some rose out of dunes while to the west other crept beneath piles of shale.” pg. 172 Caravans, Michener, 1963.
Afghans are portrayed as ambitious, clever people shaped by their history and geography, who are accustomed to surviving in conflict with the environment, each other, and external powers – from Alexander the Great, through various conquests from India and the terror of Genghis Khan, to the Russians, English and Americans in the 1940s. It is the emergence of Russian and American power that rocked Afghanistan from the 1970s through the 2010s, but while Michener anticipates it’s coming, he had no knowledge of those events at the time story was written. This gives a glimpse of Afghanistan BEFORE the modern age, BEFORE the encroachment of modern powers, BEFORE penetration of the state to remote areas, BEFORE the height of the Cold War that drew Russia and the USA into contention, BEFORE globalization brought America closer to Asia.
“’I claimed that originally Afghanistan knew the freedom of the caravan, but that willfully the people put themselves in these village prisons under the rule of the mullahs…. Miller claimed that we can never go back to the caravan. That we will know freedom only when the villages have books and roads and electricity.’ ‘Your right about the past… He’s right about the future… Some day all of us will live in villages like this. But they will be better villages.’ And he was gone.” pg. 244-245 Caravans, Michener, 1963.
The most distasteful characters are Westerners, which shields the narrative from contemporary claims of obtrusion. Bound to their countries of origin by birth and culture, seeking adventure, experience, and/ or refuge in an exotified remote locale, the Westerners are promiscuous people focused on personal or political objectives and willing to use Afghanistan and it’s people to further their own ends. Through them, we see the messiness of the struggle: people engaged in using others often discover the others are also playing them – and in this case, the Afghans have the home field advantage.
Added into the mix are various themes illustrating the palate of Afghan topography. Political complexity is illustrated as Afghans, mullahs, urban educated, rural nomads, the Americans, Russians and English compete for advantage. Religious complexity is painted through Jewish, Christian (Catholic, Protestant), and Muslim beliefs/ historical claims and is magnified by the post-Hitler era in which the story takes place. Social complexity emerges between wandering nomads and the toe hold of civilization represented by Afghan governmental employees, between citizens of international education/ language/ experience and under resourced locals, between lawfulness of cities and pragmatism of remote settlements the state literally cannot reach, and between mullahs seeking to enforce a conservative Islam and worshippers engaging in a syncretistic survivalism.
All of this complexity is brushed over with a romanticized stroke that makes the book more fictional travelogue and less social commentary, while taking us back to Michener’s time when the country of Afghanistan, it’s history and people, were not well known outside of Asia. A map in the fore leaf helps us to follow along on the journey, and brief but insightful notes clarify the line between imagination and history in a typical Michener touch.
Now that I have his perspective, I’m ready for other titles. What do you recommend?
If you’d like a brief timeline of Afghanistan’s history in the modern age, see the BBC here:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-south-a...
For epic Mitchener treatment of countries far flung from his American home, see
Poland, Mitchener, 1983
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
The Source (Israel), Mitchener, 1965
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
The Covenant (South Africa), Mitchener, 1980
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Or epic Mitchener closer to his American home:
Centennial, Mitchener, 1974
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Texas, Mitchener, 1985
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
The Caribbean, Mitchener, 1989
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
What makes this book especially intriguing is its publication in the year 1963, and setting in the post-World War II Afghanistan of the late 1940s. The main character of the work is the land itself: Afghanistan. Beautiful and complex, Michener presents us with a land full of struggle and drops story into it. We become acquainted with Afghanistan’s aspiration to modern stability, feel the heat of the nation's steep in history, and cheer for it’s precocious steps to maturity. The time in which Michener published this work, the 1960s, were relatively stable and optimistic for Afghanistan, and setting the book 20 years prior allowed Michener to dramatize the people and events bringing about this ambitious adolescence.
“We went into the night and for the first time in my life I saw the stars hanging low over the desert, for the atmosphere above us contained no moisture, no dust, no impediment of any kind. It was probably the cleanest air man knows and it displayed the stars as no other could. Not even at Qala Bist, which stood by the river, had the air been so pure. The stars seemed enormous, but what surprised me most was the fact that they dropped right to the horizon, so that to the east some rose out of dunes while to the west other crept beneath piles of shale.” pg. 172 Caravans, Michener, 1963.
Afghans are portrayed as ambitious, clever people shaped by their history and geography, who are accustomed to surviving in conflict with the environment, each other, and external powers – from Alexander the Great, through various conquests from India and the terror of Genghis Khan, to the Russians, English and Americans in the 1940s. It is the emergence of Russian and American power that rocked Afghanistan from the 1970s through the 2010s, but while Michener anticipates it’s coming, he had no knowledge of those events at the time story was written. This gives a glimpse of Afghanistan BEFORE the modern age, BEFORE the encroachment of modern powers, BEFORE penetration of the state to remote areas, BEFORE the height of the Cold War that drew Russia and the USA into contention, BEFORE globalization brought America closer to Asia.
“’I claimed that originally Afghanistan knew the freedom of the caravan, but that willfully the people put themselves in these village prisons under the rule of the mullahs…. Miller claimed that we can never go back to the caravan. That we will know freedom only when the villages have books and roads and electricity.’ ‘Your right about the past… He’s right about the future… Some day all of us will live in villages like this. But they will be better villages.’ And he was gone.” pg. 244-245 Caravans, Michener, 1963.
The most distasteful characters are Westerners, which shields the narrative from contemporary claims of obtrusion. Bound to their countries of origin by birth and culture, seeking adventure, experience, and/ or refuge in an exotified remote locale, the Westerners are promiscuous people focused on personal or political objectives and willing to use Afghanistan and it’s people to further their own ends. Through them, we see the messiness of the struggle: people engaged in using others often discover the others are also playing them – and in this case, the Afghans have the home field advantage.
Added into the mix are various themes illustrating the palate of Afghan topography. Political complexity is illustrated as Afghans, mullahs, urban educated, rural nomads, the Americans, Russians and English compete for advantage. Religious complexity is painted through Jewish, Christian (Catholic, Protestant), and Muslim beliefs/ historical claims and is magnified by the post-Hitler era in which the story takes place. Social complexity emerges between wandering nomads and the toe hold of civilization represented by Afghan governmental employees, between citizens of international education/ language/ experience and under resourced locals, between lawfulness of cities and pragmatism of remote settlements the state literally cannot reach, and between mullahs seeking to enforce a conservative Islam and worshippers engaging in a syncretistic survivalism.
All of this complexity is brushed over with a romanticized stroke that makes the book more fictional travelogue and less social commentary, while taking us back to Michener’s time when the country of Afghanistan, it’s history and people, were not well known outside of Asia. A map in the fore leaf helps us to follow along on the journey, and brief but insightful notes clarify the line between imagination and history in a typical Michener touch.
Now that I have his perspective, I’m ready for other titles. What do you recommend?
If you’d like a brief timeline of Afghanistan’s history in the modern age, see the BBC here:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-south-a...
For epic Mitchener treatment of countries far flung from his American home, see
Poland, Mitchener, 1983
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
The Source (Israel), Mitchener, 1965
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
The Covenant (South Africa), Mitchener, 1980
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Or epic Mitchener closer to his American home:
Centennial, Mitchener, 1974
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Texas, Mitchener, 1985
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
The Caribbean, Mitchener, 1989
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
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Quotes Ebookwormy1 Liked
“We went into the night and for the first time in my life I saw the stars hanging low over the desert, for the atmosphere above us contained no moisture, no dust, no impediment of any kind. It was probably the cleanest air man knows and it displayed the stars as no other could. Not even at Qala Bist, which stood by the river, had the air been so pure. The stars seemed enormous, but what surprised me most was the fact that they dropped right to the horizon, so that to the east some rose out of dunes while to the west other crept beneath piles of shale.” pg 172 Caravans, Michener, 1963.”
― Caravans
― Caravans
“I claimed that originally Afghanistan knew the freedom of the caravan, but that willfully the people put themselves in these village prisons under the rule of the mullahs…. Miller claimed that we can never go back to the caravan. That we will know freedom only when the villages have books and roads and electricity.’ ‘Your right about the past… He’s right about the future… Some day all of us will live in villages like this. But they will be better villages.’ And he was gone.” pg 244-245 Caravans, Michener, 1963.”
― Caravans
― Caravans
Reading Progress
March 29, 2008
– Shelved
June 4, 2017
–
Started Reading
July, 2017
–
Finished Reading
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Paul
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Jan 01, 2018 10:23AM
I enjoyed your review of Caravans. The book about Afghanistan I recommend is AFGHANISTAN: How the West Lost Its Way (2011) by Tim Bird and Alex Marshall. My review is on Goodreads.
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Paul wrote: "I enjoyed your review of Caravans. The book about Afghanistan I recommend is AFGHANISTAN: How the West Lost Its Way (2011) by Tim Bird and Alex Marshall. My review is on Goodreads."Thanks, Paul. I liked your review and added the book to my to-reads.
