- Paperback: 400 pages
- Publisher: Vintage Books; Reprint edition (April 1994)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0679727833
- ISBN-13: 978-0679727835
- Product Dimensions: 13 x 2 x 20.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 998,875 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
In An Antique Land
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Product Description
Product Description
In an Antique Land is a subversive history in the guise of a traveller's tale. When the author stumbles across a slave narrative in the margins of an ancient text, his curiosity is piqued. What follows is a ten year search, which brings author and slave together across 800 hundred years of colonial history. Bursting with anecdote and exuberant detail, it offers a magical, intimate biography of the private life of a country, Egypt, from the Crusades to Operation Desert Storm.
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
About the Author
Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta in 1956 and is one of India's best-known writers. His books include The Circle of Reason, The Shadow Lines, Dancing in Cambodia, The Calcutta Chromosome, The Glass Palace, Incendiary Circumstances, The Hungry Tide. His most recent novel, Sea of Poppies, is the first volume of the Ibis Trilogy.
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
I FIRST BEGAN to dream of Cairo in the evenings, as I sat in my room, listening, while Abu-'Ali berated his wife or shouted at some unfortunate customer who had happened to incur his displeasure while making purchases at his shop. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
I FIRST BEGAN to dream of Cairo in the evenings, as I sat in my room, listening, while Abu-'Ali berated his wife or shouted at some unfortunate customer who had happened to incur his displeasure while making purchases at his shop. Read the first page
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
13 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Amitav Ghosh is an author par excellence...The Glass House and Hungry Tide (if one sees the BBC Documentary on Ganges, it would go hand in hand with Hungry Tide):his command and portrayal in English is simply superb. Whatever prompted him to go to Egypt and write this in depth historical portrayal alongwith an interesting account of Egyptian village life ..this would surely be interesting to know...This book needed time and one needed to be attentive..its certainly not the kind of absorbing reading as with Glass Palace or Hungry Tide....but was nevertheless interesting for me to take it on a long distance flight...this would appeal to anyone interested in the connections between Jewish History, India and Egypt...there was a thriving Jewish community in Kochi and Calcutta & I am sure there will be one once again as the face of Indian economy changes...but its certainly not a book for a short bus journey...
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
To categorise this as a travel book is misleading. In fact it is anthropology and history with two main settings: rural Egypt in relatively modern times and a web of commercial and cultural interactions from the Mediterranean to the western coast of India uncovered by a medieval Jewish manuscript found amongst the detritus of an old synagogue in Cairo. It's an account of social change, of the loss of a cosmopolitan and even peaceful way of transacting things across seas and cultures to an alien brutality, the bellicose European way of doing things, and the resultant foreclosure of mutual understanding, as exhibited in small Egyptian communities whose interpretation of the world has thereby become so different. Greatly evocative, incredibly researched, a wonderful read.
3 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
What prompted Ghosh to write this? Well, very few people know that Amitav Ghosh is an anthropologist-- has a DPhil from Oxford University. he did fieldwork in Eqypt and wrote about Kinship....
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Great!
This author is wonderful. Would highly recommend any of his books.
Very enjoyable reading.
Very enjoyable reading.
Published 21 months ago by A. S. Larocque
A good modern picture of an antique culture.
The author has done an excellent job of observing village culture being impacted by the 20th century. I found it educational and absorbing reading.
Published on 1 Dec 1998
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