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August to November 2005 A Christmas gift from my loving, book-addict Mother.
What a book. What an Odd book. What an Idea for a book. (And for those who know it, I read the Male version; which is nearly identical to the female version, except for a couple of line in it.)
The idea was... SO odd. It calls it's self a lexicon novel. But even that suggests something more comprehensible then this book its self. The Lexicon part is clear; The whole book is written as a lexicon; a dictionary. It describes fragments of culture, of fruit, of people, of peoples, of legends, and so on, all of which relate to the long forgotten Khazar people. And through these dictionary entries, one learns who these Khazar people were, and what happened with them. BUT... Number One twist to the idea: There were THREE different collections of information about the Khazars: The Christian, Jewish, and Islamic. So, this is actually three separate dictionaries, about the same subject, bound together. The second twist is, that the Khazar people called wise men of those other three religions together, and afterwards, the whole Khazar civilization adopted one of those three faiths. (I'm not certain if they all converted to the Jewish faith, or if each citizen chose as they wished.) So, the "story" told in the book is not a history of the people: it's the history of these people's end. -In a way.
That's the third twist, perhaps; That only one quarter or so is about the end of the Khazars. The rest is about the research that people made about their end. As well as the history of the dictionaries them selves. And then there's the things relating to the bringing together of the three separate dictionaries, and the joining of them. All together, it seems to me a VERY strange way of composing a... novel. But then, it's such a strange subject as well. It wouldn't have been so strange if the subject had been only the end of this civilization. But with all the tales of later historians, and their relation to the research about the Khazars... it's so... Other. Different. It requires a different mode of thought to approach it.
And there's a fourth Twist: There is a certain degree of magic, and the Unknowable which is involved too. At the beginning, I looked at it all as simply the ancient beliefs of these people. But then some of the Magical elements were carried over into the tales of the later historians who researched the Khazars. -But in an uncertain way. Only later still, when there were historians researching the historians, were the elements of magic more clear. Only then, can you see that it was not a strange dream by the historian of the middle-ages, but an other, strange reality. And there's a lot of things that are only clear, when you see the overlap of two, or even three view points. (from the three different religions.) So one legend which has an utterly fantastic, and mad ending becomes more clear, as you see it told by the scribe of another faith.
But what do I have to say about the actual content of the book? Do I have any reaction to what was Said? Hmm...
It's hard to respond to. I can say though, that I liked the way it was written, (I mean the style of individual sentences.) And I also like the way the book as a whole was composed, with the great mystery through the whole thing, and many many Many points left unclarified. It was also rather interesting to see how the views from the three religions differed. And even more so, what the three religions had to say about each other.
There's such a jumble of tales, legends, and fables. And they nearly all have some mystical element, which is nearly never explained. Somehow though, the book as a whole hangs together, and I have the feeling that each piece fits together. (Only the feeling, and not the certainty, because I have no clear picture at all about how the pieces fit together.) How about a random example? Let's take the year I was born in: 79. What is there on page 79 which I'm not clear about? Here we are:
A man was asked why he always held a book in front of himself when speaking. He replied that he felt naked without the book, and who would believe that a naked man has many robes?
Alright; I can sort of see what was meant by that now. I think. Or do I? He would Feel as though others would think him knowledgeless? Perhaps it means that in his Home, (He was a Christian meeting the Khazars, in their land, at that point of the book,) In his Home, others would regard him as naked without a book. And who would believe, (at his home,) that a man without a book, has actually read many of them. And so, he has developed a feeling, regardless of where he should be, that to speak, without a book, is to look foolish.
Could that be a correct interpretation? Will there be a better example on page 179? Ah yes indeed:
"I hope you won't take [some poems] too seriously, because the words in the poems are not the real words. The real word is always like an apple with a snake wrapped around the tree, its roots in the earth and crest in the sky."
How many ways could a reader interpret that? I caved in to the temptation (here, and in a great deal of other places,) to just carry on, and not stop until I comprehend, at every strange idea. But some of the strange ideas stuck in my head afterwards anyhow. (One of the most striking, was near the beginning of the book. There was a small legend there about a young married couple who went to have a picnic in a Greek pantheon. -And the woman ends up getting torn to pieces by the shrieking souls of the long dead. And then the man meets his wife's soul, who doesn't know him, until he gives her a drop of his blood. -At which point he gets torn to shreds as well. -But that was only the tragic, romantic end of the story -better to be dead, then forgotten by the one you love, -the rest of that story was more complicated still: The man was not a man, but the creation, something like Frankenstein, of one genius scientist. And his death was just the last test that the scientist put him to: to see if his creation was so good, that it could even fool the ghosts into believing that it was a real human.)
So, it's a good, strange, unique book. And then, at the very end, there's a short, dense with meaning... epilogue. And in it, the author apologizes for taking up so much of the reader's time. Really, he finds it incorrect that anyone should sit alone for that much time, to read a thick book. So, he tells the reader to take the first Wednesday of the month, to go to the coffeehouse in the main square, and to meet someone there. And then the two of them could have discussions, and do more than just Read about life. -What a way to end a book! (And I, with more than a few years of lonely, solitary book reading behind me, can deeply relate to the message given.)
One closing note that I forgot to write about: There were many, many MANY places, where my feeling was that this book was relating fact. I wondered "what was that war 1300 years ago about?" and "Ah! So this was in a time when the Persians were a great force, and were pushing their borders to the north." And I could not help from believing that there really was a Khazar civilization. And that they had three capitols: one for summer, one for winter, and one for times of war. (Perhaps part of my conviction that these people had to have existed, is that it seems like such an improbable amount of creativity and attention to details, for the entire thing to have been invented in the head of one man. Who would think up the detail for a fictional ancient civilization that they'd have a separate capitol for times of war? -Especially when the book being written about these people doesn't have anything to do with a single war they waged.) But, as far as I can tell, the entire thing is fictional; There was never even a single Khazar in the history of the known world.