The Sinai Tapestry is a story that merrily bounces back and forth through history, from the Holy Land in 1000 BC, to Victorian England, then back to the Holy Roman Empire during the Thirty Years War, with pit-stops in a dozen other places along the way. Similarly it flits back and forth between genres, a gentle satire of Victorian sexual morals at one point, a heart-breaking war story the next, with a love story, a Boy’s Own adventure and a Middle East travelogue in between. It features a diverse cast of wonderful characters, including but not limited to; Plantagenet Strongbow, 26th Earl of Dorset, 7’7” tall and deaf as a doornail, a fierce non-conformist and the finest fencer, botanist and exlorer of Victorian England; Joe O’Sullivan Beare, failed Irish freedom-fighter and gun-runner, 33rd son of a fisherman-prophet; Harun al-Rashid, antiquities dealer and possible Immortal Guardian of the city of Jerusalem; Wallenstein Skanderberg, a mad Albanian monk who rediscovers the Original Bible, and dozens more. It’s a story about religion and faith, the search for knowledge, the tragic beauty of a Lost Cause, the birth and death of nations, “the mammoth course of history, it’s large brutish atrocities and the small moments of goodness” as the afterword puts it. Somehow Whittlemore manages to take all of this and weave (‘cause, tapestry, get it???!) not just a coherent narrative, but an engrossing one.The Smyrna chapter is a particular highlight. Whittlemore takes a largely forgotten chapter in 20th century history and delves deep. His anger and sorrow are palpable on the page as he portrays the very worst and best that humankind has to offer, when the Turkish army comes to reclaim the town of Smyrna and unleashes an orgy of rape and slaughter, while an uncaring international community watches on impassively. So much of the Sinai Tapestry has a whimsical tone, but when Whittlemore changes gears he does it very effectively, sliding effortlessly into a story of war, inhumanity and heroism, damaged characters desperately trying to survive a world that has suddenly gone mad.Some sections can be a little too twee or arch at times, but whenever this threatens to become too much Whittlemore always manages to flip the script and deliver a gut punch, and what was bordering on caricature becomes character again, a flesh and blood human being, a startling and forgotten moment in the long and bloody history of the Middle East, a secret triumph or a public failure.This is a bit of a weird book at times. I’m not entirely sure it’s the forgotten classic that some claim, but it is pretty damn good. Very damn good. Whatever deficits there are in the telling, it finishes with incredible strength and power and left me wanting more.
Un anachorète albanais égaré dans le Sinaï, Skanderberg Wallenstein, découvre par accident le manuscrit le plus ancien de la Bible. Horrifié par sa lecture, il épuise sa vie à fabriquer le plus grand faux de l'Histoire. Afin que la Bible demeure telle que nous la connaissons. Un lord anglais excentrique, Plantagenêt Strongbow, duc de Dorset, rompt avec les coutumes bizarres de sa famille et parcourt nu les déserts du Moyen-Orient avant d'écrire une somme sur le sexe en trente-trois volumes et d'acquérir secrètement tous les biens de l'Empire ottoman. Un Juif arabe né sous les Pharaons, Hadj Harun, coiffé d'un casque de croisé, défend seul Jérusalem contre la multitude de ses envahisseurs, et ne sait plus s'il est juif ou arabe, ni du reste qui il est. Un adolescent irlandais, Joe 0'Sullivan Beare, mène avec une redoutable pétoire la lutte contre l'oppresseur anglais avant de fuir en Palestine sous la défroque d'une religieuse et de devenir par accident un héros de la guerre de Crimée, perdue bien avant sa naissance. Mélange épicé de roman d'espionnage et de conte des Mille et Une Nuits, d'histoire secrète et de spéculation échevelée, Le Codex du Sinaï est l'œuvre d'un écrivain hors normes, ancien agent de la CIA, qui a fait de Jérusalem sa terre d'élection. C'est un de ces livres qui paraissent destinés aux amateurs de science-fiction, qui donnent du monde une vision décalée, ironique, uchronique, et qui affirment que la vérité est ailleurs sans jamais cesser de se présenter comme de la fiction. Un domaine dans lequel ont excellé des écrivains aussi célèbres que Vladimir Nabokov ou Umberto Eco et, plus près de nous, Neal Stephenson dans son cycle du Cryptonomicon ou Theodore Roszak dans La Conspiration des ténèbres. Le Quatuor de Jérusalem, dont Le Codex du Sinaï est le premier volet, appartient à cette étrange et séduisante cohorte.
Do You like book Sinai Tapestry (2002)?
A deaf, seven-foot-seven duke, who is both master botanist and swordsman, explores the Middle East, writes an embarrassingly comprehensive treatise on sex, and then, offended by the revocation of his title, proceeds to sell his British estate and buy the Ottoman Empire. A bastard Albanian nobleman decides one day to become a monk and subsequently discovers a copy of The Bible, New Testament included, that is a thousand years older than Christ. An infamous Irish partisan, who happens to be the 33rd child of a prophet, flees British-occupied Ireland in the guise of a nun and becomes a Middle-Eastern arms smuggler.Such is the stuff of Sinai Tapestry, a work that piles improbability upon impossibility so quickly, stylishly, and with such good humour, that one can’t help but be taken along for the ride. Epic, droll, mercurial, and bawdy, Whittemore’s novel is a work of genuine originality and an unfailingly surprising pleasure to read. One might readily imagine its mythically-proportioned characters participating in the intrigues of the Greek pantheon, but Sinai Tapestry is no dusty classic; it is written in an economical and highly accessible style.The book’s many-stranded swashbuckling at times rarefies into a contemplation of what constitutes home, peace, and one’s true calling; more than anything the book is concerned with its characters’ search for these things. But there are also darker struggles: with rejection and loss, with madness, and with the sometimes terrible brutality of others. Sinai Tapestry has its grisly and sobering moments, none more so than an unflinching account of the 1922 massacre at Smyrna.The first novel in a series of four, Sinai Tapestry is, nevertheless, quite self-contained and satisfying in its own right. Highly recommended.
—Todd
Edward Whittemore, ex-CIA agent with great insight into the Middle East, has written a quartet of sadly under-read novels that burst with humor, larger-than-life characters, Rabelaisian earthiness and deep compassion. Sinai Tapestry is the first novel in this quartet, setting an absurd pace with a protagonist who is a lampoon of Sir Richard Burton, the explorer (not the actor): "Plantagenet Strongbow, twenty-ninth Duke of Dorset, seven feet, seven inches tall, the greatest swordsman, botanist and explorer of the Victorian age, who disappears in the Sinai in 1840." Stick with these books and find out how secret control of the Middle East turned on the result of a long-term poker game and how the real Bible was dictated by a blind man to an imbecile. The writing is brilliant, blistering, and parallels Pynchon in themes, though this novel was contemporary with Pynchon's masterpiece, Gravity's Rainbow. Unlike Pynchon, though, the writing is accessible and yet still contains a wealth of fancy, unusual and forgotten historical episodes, ruminations on human nature and characters more lively than most historical novels.One of my Top 10 favorite writers!For more information, go to:http://www.jerusalemdreaming.info/
—Steve
Current FB Status:Has anyone ever read/heard of The Jerusalem Quartet by Edward Whittemore? Out of print, rambling, impossible, and obscure, I accidentally discovered this series of books on Oyster, and they are truly unbelievable and unlike anything I have ever read. The internet has almost nothing to say about them other than they were written by a former undercover CIA agent. I am growing desperate to connect with someone who can verify their quality, or just confirm their existence. I am starting to think I've just imagined the whole thing!
—Rachael Schnurr
