Amitav Ghoshs In an Antique Land - 1088 Words

Book Review: Amitav Ghosh In an Antique Land â€Å"The only people for whom we can even begin to imagine properly human, individual, existences are the literate and the consequential, the wazirs and the sultans, the chroniclers, and the priests—the people who had the power to inscribe themselves physically upon time† (Ghosh 17). History is written by the victorious, influential and powerful; however, history has forgotten the people whose voices were seized, those who were illiterate and ineloquent, and most importantly those who were oppressed by the institution of casted societies. Because history does not document those voices, it is the duty to the anthropologist, the historiographer, the philosopher as well as scholars in other fields of†¦show more content†¦What was most intriguing about the text is that it is stated that there is a thirty-year period between the first letters in which the slave is mentioned. I was well aware that slaves were a commodity in the medieval period, however not to this e xtent. This was not the case; the slave in the letters between Khalav and Abraham gradually gained importance in that he was given permission to mention something in the letter later on. Moreover, the mentioning of the slave is short, however, without this mentioning, his life, his story would have been buried with the other stories that history fails to mention. Weather that is because of a societal stigma that doesn’t allow for the truth to be revealed i.e. religious law, societal law etc. or because of an academic stigma that doesn’t allow for even the slightest reasonable doubt. â€Å"The Slave of MSH.6 first stepped upon the stage of modern history in 1942. His was a brief debut, in the obscurest of theatres, and he was scarcely out of the wings before he was gone again − more a prompter‟s whisper than a recognizable face in the cast† (Ghosh 13). The idea that a synagogue existed in the 12th century, in the 19th century they would be destroyed, interreligious dynamics then and now. It can be debated if In An Antique Land is a novel, a autobiography, a biography or even a travelogue. However, the format of this book ignited the ideas from the film Live and Become in which we viewed in class. Live and BecomeShow MoreRelatedIn an Antique Land Essay804 Words   |  4 PagesIn Amitav Ghoshs, In an Antique Land, the author compares his life with that of a slave named Bomma. He reveals that both men live in antique lands, foreign to their culture and surrounded by very different people. Ghosh also relates the book to Percy Bysshe Shellys poem Ozymandias, a piece on mankinds hubris and the insignificance of the individual. Ghosh effectively juxtaposes Bommas life with his own as he tries to find himself and unlock the slaves past through the ancient papers of the