LAND OF MARVELS by Barry Unsworth (fic)

Barry Unsworth, a Booker Prize winner for Sacred Hunger writes fine historical novels that are well researched and terrific reads.  Land of Marvels is much the same.  The setting is in Mesopotamia in 1914 just before World War I breaks out.  One has a feeling of compassion for the characters as they reveal their ambitions.  The reader knows what future the great war will bring and knows the futility of their hopes.  The Ottoman Empire is in decline, and the Middle East is still made up of desert areas ruled by tribesmen.  Germany, England, and even the United States have begun their incursion into land ruled by the Turks in the hopes of finding oil. A few men, including Winston Churchill have the foresight to recognize its coming importance.

As the story opens, John Somerville an English archaeologist specializing in the Assyrian Empire is working on a dig near what will become Iraq, but still then under Turkish rule.  He is sponsored by the Royal Society.  Besides needing money for his mission, he desperately needs time as he daily watches the Germans building a railroad which promises to cut through his excavation site.  Somerville firmly in his ivory tower cannot see what is happening under his nose.  He is on the cusp of a very important discovery, and suspense builds as the novel evolves.

Equally naive is his wife, Edith, a true daughter of Imperial Britain.  Her opposite is Patricia, a very modern young lady, a graduate of Cambridge who is an admirer of Fanny Pankhurst and the votes for women movement. These women are thrown together with an assortment of characters some intellectual and others crassly materialistic.  Patricia falls in love with a cuneiform expert named Palmer who is also of a liberal bent.  He is acting as an assistant to Somerville and has a more worldly outlook and firmer grasp on reality.  There is also a British spy, a major Manning and a couple of Swedish missionaries who are attempting to recreate a tourist attraction, convinced they have discovered the site of the Garden of Eden. 

Enter Alex Elliot, an American geologist who sets story in action, bringing mystery with him, eventually leading to a spectacular climax.  Elliot is an energetic and handsome daredevil who is a double agent working for both the Germans and English, but above all working for his own interests.  He sets the heart of the proper and inexperienced Edith on fire. The reader becomes intrigued with these characters and their involvement with each other. 

Unsworth, the true historian presents an interesting contrast to the West's continuing involvement with the Middle East and its voracious appetite for oil.  It all begins here including the West's misunderstanding of the culture and history of the region.  I recommend this novel as an excellent adventure story, but also as a thought provoking exercise in the parallels with today's world and the problems of the Middle Eastern countries.