The Saddlebag - Softcover

Nakhjavani, Bahiyyih

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0747552967 ISBN 13: 9780747552963

Publisher: TRAFALGAR SQUARE +

Synopsis

A tantalising tale of what befalls nine different individuals travelling the desert route between Mecca and Medina in the middle of the nineteenth century, as they encounter a mysterious saddlebag that changes each of their lives. It seems a perfectly ordinary saddlebag when the Thief steals it from a Pilgrim; but what are its contents, so precious and so powerful that they can wreak death or joy, ruin or salvation 'Like CATCH 22 and THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS, when you finish reading Bahiyyih Nakhjavani's debut novel, you wonder how on earth she is ever going to be able to follow it up, such is the uniqueness of its form, the precise simplicity of its language and the vaguely unsettling nature of its premise' BIG ISSUE

About this title

About the Author:

Bahiyyih Nakhjavani is a Persian writer who has written for documentary film and lectures internationally on the arts and the Baha'i faith.

From Publishers Weekly:

Nakhjavani chronicles a day in the life of nine 19th-century characters traveling between Mecca and Medina in this engaging first novel. Though they come from a wide variety of religious, national and socioeconomic backgrounds, all find themselves in the same caravan when it is beset by a sandstorm and a brutal bandit attack. Each chapter recounts these events from the perspective of its title character, a device Nakhjavani uses skillfully; not only does she avoid the tedium that could result from multiple retellings, but she also turns the bit player in one narrator's story into the complicated hero of another. For example, a sleazy Indian money changer, who would have remained a caricature in a lesser novel, becomes in Nakhjavani's hands a brave figure with a heartrending backstory. As this Indian and the other sojourners experience the outward horrors of the day, Nakhjavani shows how God uses their respective religious orientations and the secrets bundled in a saddlebag to reveal life-changing truths to each of them. The novel's Baha'i message is beautifully rendered in these tales of multiple paths leading to one destination, and its characters connect through encounters reminiscent of those in Michael Ondaatje's tales of unlikely soulmates whose unions bridge vast cultural divides. Nakhjavani's anachronistic style reads as if she were adapting 19th-century folktales rather than writing original fiction, and this quality, rather than its vaguely didactic raison d'?tre, sets the novel apart from the bulk of contemporary literary fiction and adds immensely to its charm.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: TRAFALGAR SQUARE +
• ISBN 10: 0747552967
• ISBN 13: 9780747552963
• Binding: Paperback