It seems if you write fiction [in the West] your nationality is not that important, but if you write fiction in [the Middle East] your nationality and, even worse, ethnicity are important. When an English writer writes about a love affair he writes about humanity’s love affair, but when I write about a love affair I am only talking about a Turk’s love affair.

Do you think this is an accurate judgment of how non-Western writers are viewed by the West? I’m not sure I know enough to form an opinion one way or the other.

“Venezia Marco Polo” by Kaka

1. Marco Polo - Author of Il Milione (”The Million” or sometimes titled The Travels of Marco Polo in English translations). The famous Venetian traveler brought stories of his travels to the Middle East, Central Asia and the Far East. He claimed to have served in the Mongol court of Kublai Kahn, although this fact is contested by many historians.
2. Alexis de Tocqueville - His book, Democracy in America, is about de Tocqueville’s travels in America and his impressions of American Democracy in 1830s. For Americans, it’s interesting to read an outsider’s opinion of our country soon after its formation.
3. Charles Dickens - Two less known works by the famous author are about Italy and the Eastern United States and are both available for free download: Pictures From Italy and American Notes.
4. John Steinbeck - One of the most famous authors of the last century and one of my personal favorites, Steinbeck wrote the travelogue Travels with Charley in Search of America about his road trip with his dog. You could also argue that The Grapes of Wrath is a fictionalized account of a travel story.
5. Michael Palin - Yes that Michael Palin. In his post-Monty Python career, Palin has made quite a name for himself with his trips around the world, documented by the BBC. To date he has written: Around the World in 80 Days, Pole to Pole, Full Circle, Michael Palin’s Hemingway Adventure, Sahara, Himalaya, and New Europe. All are available for free download on his website.

Conrad, Nabokov, Naipaul — these are writers known for having managed to migrate between languages, cultures, countries, continents, and even civilizations. Their imaginations were fed by exile, a nourishment not drawn through roots but through rootlessness. My imagination, however, requires that I stay in the same city, on the same street, in the same house, gazing at the same view. Istanbul’s fate is my fate. I am attached to this city because it made me who I am.

–Istanbul by Orhan Pamuk, page 6

It seems to me that there is both advantage and disadvantage to a native versus a foreign perspective. The native often understands the subtlety and complexities of their culture and language. From what I can tell thus far of Istanbul, Pamuk has analyzed every spec of dust in his native city. V.S. Naipaul - who Pamuk mentions in the quote above - is the perfect counter example. He was born in Trinidad to an Indian-Trinidadian family, but writes with an arm’s length perspective, as an outsider looking in on India, Pakistan and Europe.

There might also be a third type, the expatriate analyzing his homeland. James Joyce comes to mind. I haven’t really read enough of Joyce to really comment intelligently.

• Afghanistan: An Unexpected Light
• America: Old Glory, Ghost Riders, Stranger on a Train
• Australia: In a Sunburned Country, The Songlines
• Asia: A Fortune-Teller Told Me
• China: Red Dust
• Congo: Facing the Congo
• Ethiopia/Somalia/Sudan: Arabian Sands
• Himalayas: The Snow Leopard
• India: Slowly Down the Ganges, City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi
• Ireland: A Secret Map of Ireland
• Italy: Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere
• Iran/Iraq: The Valleys of the Assassins
• Mongolia: In the Empire of Genghis Khan
• Pacific Rim: Full Circle (free)
• Romania: Transylvania and Beyond
• Venezuela: In Trouble Again

Turkish novelist Pamuk (Snow) presents a breathtaking portrait of a city, an elegy for a dead civilization and a meditation on life’s complicated intimacies. The author, born in 1952 into a rapidly fading bourgeois family in Istanbul, spins a masterful tale, moving from his fractured extended family, all living in a communal apartment building, out into the city and encompassing the entire Ottoman Empire. Pamuk sees the slow collapse of the once powerful empire hanging like a pall over the city and its citizens.

In Eastward to Tartary, Kaplan starts off in what is often euphemistically called “New Europe,” otherwise known as “Eastern” or, perhaps more accurately, “Central” Europe. In Budapest he meets an eccentric man who posits the idea that the amount of democracy and “civilization” present in a country today is directly related to how close the country was geographically, socially and politically to Europe during the enlightenment. This theme, amended to include the influence of the Ottoman and Soviet Empires, is woven throughout Kaplan’s travels through Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Armenia.

Another touchstone of the book is the impermanence of the socio-political systems of a country at any given point in history. While it is more common for people to analyze the stability of a country while looking through a macro lens, Kaplan zooms way out and notices that the borders, ethnicities, leadership and prosperity of a country are almost always in constant flux. With this in mind, Kaplan looks at the present situation in the Balkans, Middle East, Caucasus and Central Asian regions with an eye towards what the future might hold for these areas. In this regard, Kaplan is at his best in the Caucasus and Central Asia, where even an observer with a macro lens realizes that what we see today is almost certainly going to be different in the near future.

One part of the Eastward to Tartary that I thought was not up to par with the others was the chapter on Armenia. Kaplan admits that it was written as an afterthought and the quality of writing and depth of analysis confirms Kaplan’s admission. That particular chapter lacks the depth of historical analysis Kaplan provides about the other countries he traveled to in the book. It reads more like sketches and quick observations instead of a thoughtful critique of the people he spoke to and events witnessed while there.

The only regret I have after reading this book is that Kaplan wrote it in early 2000 about his travels in the late 1990s. As we all know, in 2001 and 2003, the 9/11 attacks and the sebsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq changed the focus in the area substantially. It would have been interesting to have a more in-depth discussion of Islamic fundamentalism in the region, and to have his pre-Afghan War impressions on Afghanistan (which he didn’t travel to for this book).

I highly recommend Eastward to Tartary. It was easy to read while still being stuffed to the brim with useful information and impressions of a region that is still at the forefront of the West’s attention.

All Posts on Eastward to Tartary:

• Bulgarian Monkey Out in the Cold Thanks to Russia’s Gazprom
• What was True Then, Is True Now
• The Strange Names English Speakers Call Other Countries
• Trust But Verify: Using Hindsight to Read Eastward to Tartary
• Robert Kaplan on Hugh Hewitt Radio Show
• Provocative Quote on Traveling Alone
• Book One: Robert Kaplan’s Eastward to Tartary

The story is inspiring and beautiful. I highly recommend it. And apparently, so do the folks at the New York Times. Not to mention the 1,373 people who have given it 5 stars on Amazon.

The first name that springs to mind is that of Freya Stark, a British explorer who traveled extensively in the Middle East during the late 1920s and 30s. She wrote over 24 books that opened windows to the history, cartography, and archeology of areas that Western MEN had never attempted to access. I love her writing, too. She made no apology for being a woman with a woman’s interests - in getting harem wives to talk, she’d fall back on “the thrice-blessed subject of clothes” (National Geographic Magazine would love an article on harem wives today, I’ll bet). Yet she was so strong in her self as to identify her emotion on realizing that she was the only “white” person within hundreds of kilometers: happiness.

. . .

While Freya Stark was an exceptional person, women are living lives dedicated to big ideas, and writing about them, all the time. Philosopher/essayist Susan Sontag, naturalist Diane Fossey, historian Barbara Tuchman in our times - Virginia Woolfe, whose quiet voice advocating a woman’s right to personal space magnified over time into a seminal call for women’s right to an identity of our own - and earlier, Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose work seems incredibly old-fashioned now, but whose “Uncle Tom” helped change the fate of Black people in the U.S.

. . . I think it’s women’s style of writing that seems less legitimate to publishers, and that’s why we hear less of women with big ideas. Here’s another link, to an article titled “Can Women Writers Survive the Creative Writing Workshop?”

The article that Mimi linked to points out that only a third of the writers in the then most recent (the article was written in 1999) Norton Anthology of American Literature are women?! I don’t read as much literary fiction as many other bibliophiles, but that breakdown doesn’t sound right to me.

Update — As I was clicking through my feedreader, I came across this post about a travel lit book written by a woman: Along the Inca Road: A Woman’s Journey into an Ancient Empire. Amazon describes the book as follows, “What’s an American woman doing shaking a pink cape at a bull on a hillside in Peru? Ask Karin Muller, a self-described vagabond who is game for anything, especially if it’s a traditionally male task in strictly sex role-divided South America. After years of contemplating the thin red line of the Inca Road on her map of the world, Muller takes off with a grant from the National Geographic Society (which also supplied a cameraman) for a six-month jaunt through Ecuador, Peru, Brazil, and Chile.”

As great a tool as Google is, these spelling variations defeat even it, so anyone looking for information about Mohamed Al-Bosaty’s Hunger will not likely not be made aware that they could actually get the book in English from AUC Press [because the publisher uses a different spelling of the author's name].

They found three different spellings of Mohammed/Muhammed/Mohamed alone! It seems like the powers that be should at least be able to get together and agree on a single spelling of the most important figure in the world’s second largest religion. Not to mention how often newsworthy men pop up with that name.