One way in which I attempt to prolong the glow of an overseas vacation is to read their local literature. During our trip to Spain, I picked up The Second Son of the Silk Merchant, a novel that takes place in Granada just after the Catholic conquest. Much of the working class population is still Muslim, known as Moriscos. Church builders discover a collection of manuscripts purportedly from the early centuries A.D. indicating that the local population was Arabic-speaking Christians (true story). The books enhance the status of Granada until they are exposed as forgeries and inspire the Inquisition to deport all Muslims from Spain.
The author takes great pains to describe life in Granada at the turn of the 17th century. Unfortunately, the narrator sounds like he's reciting lightly narrativized dialogue from a museum exhibit.
In this Venice my father lived from the age of nineteen until forty. There was where all the wealth of the world flowed, where everything from black pepper, cinnamon, ginger, blue and red French and Catalan wool, velvet and Damask brocade, lace from Bruges, muslin from Monsul, gauze from Gaza, Brazil wood, cedar from Lebanon, cloth from Flanders to emeralds from the New World, diamonds from Africa and pearls from the Asiatic seas were hoarded. ... All this wealth flowed from the seven maritime routes, seven maritime routes that served many enormous, robust merchant galleys...
The story proper doesn't start until page 75, and it's soon interrupted by an idyll in the Andalusian countryside. The narrator Alonso Lomellino is an extremely passive character who drifts through the religious life his father chose for him, eventually becoming a mystic.
So: a vivid but largely static picture of 17th-century Granada which squanders a fascinating real-life controversy and underplays the tragedy of the expulsion of the Muslims.
No comments:
Post a Comment