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Book Review: The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson
Summary:
Imagine a world where the Black Death of the 14th century wiped out the majority of the European population, rather than one-third of it. This is the world Robinson imagines, one where Buddhism and Islam rise as the two major religions of the world (with no religion a close third). See the history of the world through the eyes of two souls who keep reincarnating in different cultures, struggling to better both themselves and their world that could easily have been ours.
Review:
I originally picked this book up because I have long held a fascination with the various religions of the world (I was actually a Religious Studies minor in undergrad). The “what if” at the center of the book seemed like a great starting place to me. Indeed, what if most of the followers of currently largest faith (Christianity, source) had died off? What things would change and what would have stayed the same? Robinson chooses to tell this tale through reincarnating souls, which sometimes gives us a lot of access to these changes but other times leaves the reader feeling like they got just a passing breath of a culture and a century.
I didn’t realize going into this that Robinson had chosen to tell this story through the eyes of the same souls reincarnating over and over again. It’s an interesting choice that I am uncertain about as it lends a sort of “this much we know” to the spiritual side of the story. We, the readers, know that the souls of people in this world definitely exist, they go to the bardo to await judgment and reincarnation. The bardo they go to appears to reflect whatever faith they had (Muslims have their own, Buddhists have their own, etc…) The idea is also put out there that each of the faiths is a different path to the same end (enlightenment). Much as I may personally believe this idea, I’m not sure how I feel about this particular story being so mythology heavy. The History BA in me very much wanted to see a more analytical power-structure play-out, which we do get some of, but not as much as we get of the how to better our souls question. I suppose what I am trying to say is that, although I was anticipating a book that was scholarly with a dash of spiritual, what I got instead was the reverse. That’s not a bad thing, and I still enjoyed it, but it definitely wasn’t what I was expecting, and I do wonder how the story may have played out differently if Robinson wasn’t so tied to the same souls over and over again.
One aspect of the same souls reincarnating that niggled at me a bit was that throughout history, no matter where they were born (or what gender or species), their names always started with the same letters. So a character whose first name in the first incarnation started with the letter K always had a name that started with the letter K. It got so I could predict who was who and, to a certain extent, how they would act in each incarnation. On the one hand, it was a cool idea, although highly unlikely someone’s name would start with the same letter throughout time and cultures and languages. On the other hand, it distracted me from the more interesting story of the different world developing with the rise of different cultures than actually appeared in our own history.
Similarly, I think there is far too much story and richness in this idea and timeline to limit it to one book. There were multiple incarnations that I really wanted to know more of. I wanted to know the whole story of these lives and this place. Instead, the reader gets a quick glimpse into one time in their lives, and then we are left jumping ahead to the bardo to find out how they died and oh here comes the next incarnation. Perhaps the point was to make the reader feel as if each life is only a blink, but the scholar in me was left wanting to know so much more about every area and life the book briefly visited. It was like getting only a small morsel of each chocolate in a box of delicious chocolates, instead of getting to savor them all over a long period of time.
All of this said, let me now discuss the parts of the book I really enjoyed (and would have liked to have seen more of). My favorite is how Robinson reimagined the Americas. The same essential problem of real history still exists for the Native Americans even with the change of the Christians mostly dying off. Mainly, they lacked easily sourced heavy metals to make higher-tech weapons and they were susceptible to all of the germs European explorers brought with them. (I learned about this in my classes in US History for my BA, but my professors told me this whole idea is also presented in the book Guns, Germs, and Steel
Robinson does a much better job painting Islam and Buddhism with a nuanced brush. Since their cultures dominate the book, this means most of the book is much more gray area, rather than presenting everything as black and white. One element that demonstrates this, is how Robinson handles Islam and women. All sides of the arguments about Islam and women are presented here. There are incarnations of the souls that are Muslim women who argue strongly that the men are misinterpreting the Quran, what Mohammed said, etc… There are of course other incarnations that say no, the extreme fundamentalism is the right interpretation. Through showing Islam through many different lenses in a world that is different from our own, Robinson demonstrates how religion is so incredibly open to interpretation, and good and bad people can shape it to their own agendas. One passage that I think demonstrates how well Robinson walks this line is a conversation some characters have about the women wearing the veil or not:
The veil has a kind of power, in certain situations. All such signs stand for other things; they are sentences spoken in matter. The hijab can say to strangers, ‘I am Islamic and in solidarity with my men, against you and all the world.’ To Islamic men it can say, ‘I will play this foolish game, this fantasy of yours, but only if in return you do everything I tell you to.’ For some men this trade, this capitulation to love, is a kind of release from the craziness of being a man. So the veil can be like putting on a magician queen’s cape…. Or it can be like putting on a slave’s collar, certainly. (page 592)
If this passage appeals to you in how it presents the various nuances and gray areas of religion and culture, then a lot of this book will appeal to you.
One final issue with the book I will note that may turn off some readers is that out of all the many incarnations, only two are in Native American bodies (and then, they are both Native Americans in North America. South America is completely left out for incarnations, although incarnations visit there). Similarly, there are no incarnations to Australia, New Zealand, Central America, or any island nation anywhere (Caribbean, Pacific Islands, United Kingdom, Iceland). There is only one incarnation where one of the souls is in an African, and that African is a slave on a Chinese slave ship who then goes to China (we thus spend very little time in Africa, just at the beginning on the slave ship). One character in an incarnation mentions that in the past she went to Africa but the reader does not see her time there. I definitely think that it’s a weakness that so many areas of the world are left out. For instance, I have zero idea what happened in Australia now that it clearly was never a penal colony of the UK (since the UK never existed). Similarly, it seems Africa would be very different with all the changes in global power, and yet the only passing mention we get of modern Africa in the later incarnations is that one of the characters visits there to fight against Female Genital Mutliation (FGM). If so much else changed, why not in Africa?
I know it may seem like I listed out a lot of issues, but it is a very long book that tackles a huge task. My review is almost as if I was reviewing an entire series in one fell swoop. Each individual part had issues, as did some of the overarching ideas, but I mostly really did enjoy reading it. It’s a fascinating thought experiment that wasn’t as well executed as it could have been, but parts of it were brilliant. I also enjoyed the feminist themes throughout. Men and women are both just souls, reincarnating into a woman is not a punishment. In fact, neither gender nor race is a punishment for previous incarnations, just species. Similarly, the more a society advances the more equal their genders and races are. There is a lot of thought given to what it means to be a woman in various areas of the world, which could easily have been passed over or not handled well.
Overall, this is a book that tackles a huge philosophical question in a fantastical way. It is a large task that probably would have been better suited to a series to fully flesh-out the world, the lives, and the nuances in both. Readers interested in spiritual questions with a tendency to view all religions as different paths to the same enlightenment and a curiosity about how the world might be different with different religions in the lead will be most suited to the book. Readers interested in a more thorough exploration of an alternate history will most likely be disappointed by the reincarnation aspect and the brief time spent in each time period and culture.
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4 out of 5 stars
Length: 763 pages – chunkster
Source: PaperBackSwap
Counts For:
Bottom of TBR Pile Challenge
and
Book Review: The Stoning of Soraya M.: A Story of Injustice in Iran by Freidoune Sahebjam (Bottom of TBR Pile Challenge)
Summary:
Sahebjam, a French-Iranian journalist, was traveling through Iran in the 1980s when he had to stop in a small village. An elderly woman, Zahra, asked him for tea so she could tell him the story of what happened to her niece, Soraya, mere weeks before. Sahebjam grants narrative to her tale to get the story of injustice out.
Soraya was a typical rural Iranian woman. Married to a villager at a young age. Her husband, Ghorban-Ali, became less and less invested in his family and more and more likely to beat them. He also became increasingly interested in young women in the city. When a criminal posing as a mullah comes to town, Ghorban-Ali sees the perfect opportunity to be rid of his wife without any costs of divorce. He, the mullah, and an easily swayed widower friend corroborate to falsely accuse Soraya of adultery and sentence her to death by stoning.
Review:
Things can easily go awry when the powers of justice are held in the hands of a select few. A lot rests on whether or not those few are good people. This book tells that tale, and it tells it movingly, regardless of whether or not all the facts of the story are precisely correct. The biggest facts are accurate, and that is what matters.
Sahebjam is a French-Iranian journalist. He thus has both the perspective of insider and outsider, which is the ideal one for a story like this. He understands the people and the village but he also knows how to present and explain things to the non-Iranian reader. Sahebjam clearly and honestly states from the beginning that he got this tale from one eyewitness. Some might argue that this story thus isn’t researched well enough or thoroughly vetted. It is indeed one eyewitness account passed through an author (and for English speakers, a translator). But the core of the injustice is verifiable: the handling of adultery in Islam. Combine this with religion and state being one and the same, and it’s easy to see how if this story didn’t indeed already happen how it could easily come to be.
The first half of the book introduces us to Sahebjam, Zahra (the aunt), and Soraya, as well as the organization of the small town and the adultery laws as followed by fundamentalist Islam. Sahebjam does a good job introducing all the people and explaining the context of the injustice without overwhelming the reader with info dumping.
Essentially, in Islam, when it comes to adultery, the woman has to do all the proving.
When a man accuses his wife [of adultery], she has to prove her innocence [in Islam]. This is the law. On the other hand, if a woman makes an accusation against her husband, she has to produce proof. (location 1079)
If the woman is wealthy, she can pay off the mullah (think of it as paying a penance in Catholicism). But:
In most cases the woman [accused of adultery in Iran] is poor—which means she is a virtual slave to her husband. She has no rights, except for the meager right to remain silent. All the husband needs to win his case of infidelity is two eyewitnesses, who are generally friends and accomplices. As for the accused woman, she has to prove her innocence and that is impossible: no one will come to her aid; no one will bear witness on her behalf. (location 129)
Regardless of whether or not Soraya was a real person (and I do believe she was), these are problematic laws that leave the door wide open for abuse by a few corrupt people. This book demonstrates that danger eloquently.
Sahebjam clearly made a choice to make the tale flow better by giving it some narrative qualities. He inserts dialogue he clearly wasn’t there to hear, and he even talks about what was going on inside people’s heads. I didn’t like that he did the latter, especially. I understand dialogue can help make a nonfiction book flow a bit, and I’m ok with that. But claiming to know what was going on inside people’s minds turned me off the narrative a bit. It leaves the door open for criticism of a story that needs to be taken seriously, and I wish he had made other narrative choices.
At first, it is easy to be irritated by Soraya’s choice to remain silent when accused. She gives up so quickly, one wonder why she never advocates for herself. But in retrospect, it’s a clear, yet subtle, depiction of what can happen to a victim of abuse over time. Eventually their spirit is just beaten out of them. Soraya demonstrates what happens when abused people are left to deal with the abuse and abuser on their own.
Overall, this book highlights the inequality innate is Muslim adultery laws, as well as the dangers of leaving justice to the hands of a few. The narrative structure doesn’t precisely suit a nonfiction account of an event, but the bones at the core of the injustice are still verifiably true. Readers who prefer a dry, precise nonfiction might not be able to look past the narrative structure. Those who can will find a moving tale of how easy it is for injustice to take over a community.
4 out of 5 stars
Source: Amazon
Book Review: The Rabbi’s Cat 2 by Joann Sfar (Series, #2) (Graphic Novel)
Summary:
The talking cat with the big ears who offers insightful commentary on his rabbi master and life in Algeria in the early 20th century is back. The rabbi’s daughter is fighting with her husband (also a rabbi), and the cat is quite happy with that. It means more snuggles from his mistress, Zlabya. Of course, the talking cat also has a couple of adventures. First he and a snake tag along with the famous Malka and his lion on a trek around the desert. Then, a stowaway Russian Jew shows up in Zlabya’s house, and he understands the cat! Soon a rag-tag bunch are off looking for the mysterious lost city of Jerusalem. We thus get to see a lot of Africa through the cat’s eyes.
Review:
I have to say, I didn’t enjoy this sequel quiiite as much as the original. I suspect that the fact that I was less familiar with the topics the cat is offering snarky commentary on had something to do with this. I really don’t know much about Northern Africa or the “lost city of Jerusalem,” so I’m sure I missed some of the inside jokes. Whereas the previous book was mostly about Jews in Algeria and the French occupation, this book seems to talk a lot more about the relative merits of the various monotheistic religions and why can’t we all just be friends.
While on their various treks, the groups run across some Muslim tribes who state that Jews are their brothers who they respect, but it is still their duty to attempt to get them to convert. The rabbi eloquently states that he is too old to learn a new language for prayer, and he is sure god will understand. Similarly, the Russian Jew falls in love with an African woman (I am uncertain from which country), and they ask the rabbi to marry them. He says he can only marry two Jews, and she states she is glad to take her husband’s god as her own. Exasperated, the rabbi states it is not that simple, she must study for years, but then relents when seeing how in love they are and says that god will understand. The cat too has learned when to hold his tongue around extremists, although he still offers commentary to the other animals, whether over an obsessive Muslim prince or a Kabbalistic elderly rabbi. What is incited repeatedly in this book is extremism in favor of tolerance and love, which is certainly always a good message.
The other message is never to judge someone as less intelligent than you simply because they speak a different language or their ways are different. I really like how this is carried over into the animal kingdom where the cat even seeks to understand the snake. At first the cat thinks the snake just willy-nilly bites people and animals, but then he realizes that this is his only tool of friendship. And yet although we should seek to understand, the cat also doesn’t hang around too long anyone who is extremist or annoying. The Muslim prince and the English explorer (who thinks the Algerians don’t bathe) are both quickly dumped by the traveling group.
While these are all good messages, I must say I missed the no holding back talking cat of the first book. I suppose he’s older and wiser, but I like him precisely because I can’t imagine a talking cat ever actually holding his tongue. Seeing him do so in this book made me kind of sad. Also, I feel like the story of Zlabya and her husband got dumped partway through and never picked back up. We know they’re fighting a lot, but then we just leave them and go off on an adventure across Africa. It felt like a final chapter was missing from the book.
Overall, this is an interesting look at the intersection of many cultures, religions, and races on the continent of Africa through the unique eyes of a rabbi’s cat, a wandering lion, and a friendly snake. If you enjoyed the first book, you shouldn’t skip this one.
3.5 out of 5 stars
Source: Public Library
Previous Books in Series:
The Rabbi’s Cat
Counts For:
Specific country? Algeria, primarily
This work by Amanda Nevius is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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