Tertulia Moderna: October 2022

Thursday, October 20, 2022

Book Review: "Tales of Ancient Worlds" by Stefan Milosavljevich

Tales of Ancient Worlds (2022)
Stefan Milosavljevich
160 pages

The tween sections in bookstores and libraries – targeting children say eight to twelve years old – seem bursting with stories of fantastical creatures, zombie attacks and superhero rescues. And while such stories can be wildly popular with that age group, these young readers may not yet realize that real life can so often be far stranger and more amazing than fiction.

Author Stefan Milosavljevich aims to change that understanding with his gorgeous book of our early history, Tales of Ancient Worlds. Subtitled Adventures in Archaeology, the book presents brief accounts of some of what archaeologists have discovered about our past, divided up into sections from The first humans, through to the pre-Columbian Age of discovery.

Milosavljevich covers both general topics, such as Your ancient family tree and The reign of horses, as well as specific discoveries, including The tower of Jericho and the mysteries of Stonehenge. He has selected his topics from points across the globe, and his tales describe both well-known and less familiar histories.

The level of his writing seems targeted at perhaps the older end of the tweens, but the book can easily be enjoyed by those a few years younger, if they find such things of interest and get help on some of the terms. Even adults will enjoy these tales; certainly I did, as I read it to my children, learning many new things about even the items I was already somewhat familiar with, and discovering histories I had been completely unaware of. Helpfully – for all age groups – challenging vocabulary specific to archaeology appear in bold font and are collected in a glossary at the end of the book.

Milosavljevich’s tales include what has been discovered and understood at the sites he describes, as well as some of the mysteries that remain at many of them. Without ever getting too technical, he gives a clear picture of the kinds of tools and techniques archaeologist use, as well as the careful process of exploring finds. Often he references the archaeologists who made the key discoveries, thus personalizing the account; by also including local archaeologists, he subtly makes clear that it was not just Western scientists who were central to the work.

In his descriptions, he keeps the tone light, finding ways to tickle a young person’s fancy while sliding in the science. Thus, in A Stink at the Bank he talks about a find at a location in the United Kingdom that was being excavated to build a banking building. During the digging a Viking city was discovered:

So many incredible finds were unearthed, including several hundreds of thousands of pieces of pottery and Viking houses – enough finds to open a museum. But by far the most intriguing (and stinkiest) was a preserved Viking poop!

In archaeology, a preserved poop is known as a coprolite. This medieval chocolate log was an absolute monster, 8 in (20 cm) long! Obviously this is a funny discovery, and you might think the archaeologists were unhappy to find it. But nothing could be further from the truth. Archaeologists can actually learn a lot from this brown gold. (127)

Nothing like a little potty humor to galvanize a youngster’s attention, as he then goes on to describe what can be discovered from such a find.

The large-format hardcover has wonderful drawings by Sam Caldwell, as evidenced by those accompanying the text of The Oldest Complaint Letter, below. As in the text, Caldwell includes drawings of the work and tools of archaeologists, as well as of particular artifacts, and humorously depicts aspects of the tales (as here the frustrated customer).

Tales of Ancient Worlds is a beautifully conceived and executed exploration of our history, and how archaeologists go about their work of uncovering it. Though targeted at tweens, readers of all ages can enjoy this book, and are likely to come away with a desire to visit the finds mentioned, and perhaps even consider a career in archaeology to reveal some of what remains to be discovered.

Other notes and information:

Have you read this book, others by this author, or even similar ones by other authors? I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts.
Other of my book reviews: FICTION Bookshelf and NON-FICTION Bookshelf

Friday, October 14, 2022

Book Review: "The Last Gift" by Abdulrazak Gurnah

The Last Gift (2011)
Abdulrazak Gurnah
279 pages

As children grow older, many come to take an active interest in their parents’ childhood, wondering where and how they lived and grew up, and what they experienced. Realizing that they fit into a larger history that extends back through their parents’ lives, children become eager to hear whatever they can about them.

When parents keep silent about their early lives, the lack of response to their children’s questions can become a point of increasing tension. Over time, a child can experience the resulting lack of knowledge as a kind of emptiness, one that can exert an almost vertiginous pull on their path into adulthood. Precisely this situation and its profound consequences form the heart of Abdulrazak Gurnah’s beautifully crafted novel The Last Gift.

The story centers on a family in England: Abbas and his wife Maryam, and their children Jamal and Hannah, who are grown and living on their own. In the opening paragraphs, Abbas has a stroke that leaves him severely weakened and forced to relearn the ability to speak. Initially unable to even get out of bed, much less go back to work, he gradually withdraws into his own thoughts. Soon, these thoughts turn to long suppressed memories of his childhood, events that ultimately led to a traumatic moment as a young adult that suddenly and dramatically changed the course of his life.

Gurnah masterfully shifts the focus between Abbas, his wife, and their children, and we soon learn that not only has Abbas hidden this shameful event from his family, but that his secrecy has had a profound impact on his children. Despite questioning their father many times, they have been able to learn little more than accidentally revealed snippets about their father’s early life, little more than that he apparently grew up somewhere in Africa.

Maryam too has kept an embarrassing secret from the rest of the family, including her husband. Though all are aware that she grew up as an orphan, she has carefully concealed her own traumatic moment, one that turned her life, too, on its head.

Abbas and Maryam, for their part, have spent their many years together bound by a tacit agreement to not pry into each other’s pasts. For Jamal and Hannah, however, especially as they’ve moved beyond childhood, the hidden nature of their parent’s early lives, and particularly that of their father’s, begins to weigh more heavily, leaving them with a vague feeling of floundering, unconnected to any particular legacy.

Eventually Abbas regains some of his strength and ability to speak. But, he also recognizes his mortality staring him in the face, and so confronts the decision of whether to finally open up to his family before it’s too late. With Maryam acting as an increasingly insistent muse at his bedside, he tentatively begins to shed the long, deep silence he has maintained about his early life.

While the mysterious pasts of Abbas and Maryam drive the plot, the story’s heart lies in the consequences of this silence, not only on their own relationship, but especially on the lives of their children. Jamal and Hannah’s inability to learn much of anything about the early lives of their parents has marked them as adults, though in ways that have taken the two of them in different directions psychologically.

Most critically, it has colored their understanding of themselves as children of immigrants. Both were born in England and, given their parents reticence, have no concept of coming from anywhere else ancestrally, and yet they regularly find themselves viewed as outsiders, as non-English. Faced from both friends and strangers in England with the seemingly inevitable question of where do you come from?, they discover it to not only reinforce their otherness despite being English-born citizens, but also to remind them of the abiding mysteries of their parents’ pasts.

In The Last Gift, Gurnah has created a story that masterfully explores the question of identity in increasingly multicultural societies, but also the profound impact that family secrets can have on children as they grow to adulthood unable to understand their heritage.