Asian Trips - Caravans: A Novel of Afghanistan
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List Price: $14.95
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Manufacturer: Random House Trade Paperbacks
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780812969825
ISBN: 0812969820
Label: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Manufacturer: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 352
Publication Date: 2003-09-09
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Release Date: 2003-09-09
Studio: Random House Trade Paperbacks
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Editorial Reviews:
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In this romantic adventure of wild Afghanistan, master storyteller James Michener mixes the allure of the past with the dangers of today. After an impetuous American girl, Ellen Jasper, marries a young Afghan engineer, her parents hear no word from her. Although she wants freedom to do as she wishes, not even she is sure what that means. In the meantime, she is as good as lost in that wild land, perhaps forever....
"An extraordinary novel....Brilliant."
THE NEW YORK TIMES
From the Paperback edition.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: If only they had read this...
Comment: A friend of mine, whose husband was head of UNESCO's Book Development Agency in Kabul, gave me Caravans a long time ago. They had thrown up their hands in frustration at the utter futility of bringing humanist values to the Afghan culture, such as it is. Indeed, the idea of an Afghan nation, much less a discrete Afghan culture, is, as they found out, ridiculous. Of course, not ridiculous to our too-clever-by-half policymakers who, from the Soviet invasion to arming the Mujahideen, to "nation building," got it woefully wrong.
I must confess, Caravans hasn't been good for my equanimity. For years I've found myself shouting at the TV or newspaper, "No, no, you bloody idiots -- read the book!"
It's an easy read (and perhaps that's why the policymakers didn't read it -- pop fiction is beneath them). It's the familiar Michener formula of exhaustively researched history as the setting for conventional plots, like family chronicle or romance or, in this case, thriller. Good historical fiction uses the fictional shell to engage the reader, and it's Michener's fictional shells that make his histories so enjoyable. Michener is the summer read that you come away from having learned something, and Caravans is no exception.
Afghanistan is not a failed state. It's never been a state the way we think of it. It's an inchoate conglomeration of tribes, clans and ad hoc alliances, usually in service to vendetta, smuggling and banditry, and surrounded by a meaningless border, which is why foreign intervention has always been a fool's errand. No, it's not a state -- beyond the fancy of Western map-makers and players of The Great Game -- but neither is it a vacuum, as the British, the Russians and the Americans have learned to their chagrin.
Go in there, get bin Laden and his henchmen, kill as many Taliban as possible, and to hell with borders (that's what you get when you let lawyers run a war), then get out and let them resume murdering and pillaging each other as they have for millennia. If we had read Caravans, we would have known, after 9/11 (if there had been a 9/11), that this was our only recourse.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Caravans Review
Comment: This is a wonderful book. I read it years ago and just finished rereading it. Michener is a great story teller and this book bears that out. Some parts did upset me, but that is what makes it a great book. A definite must read.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Early Mich at the top of his game
Comment: If the "Kite Runner" or the recent troubles in Afghanistan have piqued your interest in that country, its history, geopraphy, and peoples, there is no better look in print than this wonderful book, set in 1946, whcih may seem a little dated, but is actually at the threshold of modernity for Afghans, and a time when the rift began to develop between tradition and "progress". Mark Miller is a neophyte at the American Embassy, and his viewpoint is journalistic in its detail of life in the capital of Kabul, in which Michener shows us its social stratification, diplomatic and aristo culture, the beginnings of radical Muslim fundamentalism. Out on the trail Miller learns what a vast country Afghanistan is, and gets laid as well, as he joins a caravan on the silk route to search for a missing American female, Ellen Jasper. Up into the mountains, and into the wild, for an adventure that keeps you up turning pages.
And that is the point, I suppose: a guidebook with a real human perspective, and sex, and nearly everything else including cuisine thrown in, and not the "Dynasty"-like production of Michener's later tomes, just good journalism, photographic detail, and sex! of course. And you can't put it down. You will be ready to join the caravan as well by the end of it all.
Customer Rating:
Summary: "One of the world's great cauldrons"
Comment: Caravans is the story of an American State Department officer in Kabul's attempt to determine the fate of a Pennsylvania woman who disappeared in Afghanistan after marrying an Afghani. Of Afghanistan, the officer, Mark Miller, said it was (p 5) "one of the most inconspicuous nations on earth. In 1946 it was just emerging from the bronze age, a land incredibly old, incredibly tied to an ancient past." Accompanied by a thirty-two-year-old Afghani aide named Nur Muhammad, the twenty-six-year-old sets off in winter and spends about six months traveling around the countryside. During his mission, he meets a forty-year-old German doctor, who had previously treated Jaspar, and who had conducted experiments on Jews as a member of the Nazi party (Miller is Jewish). He also spends time with Jaspar's husband and a group of nomads. The trip is adventurous and sometimes brutal as Miller witnesses a woman being stoned as punishment for adultery, a man executed for murder by the victim's father, and a behanding. He also learns about the country's landscape, peoples, and customs; tries to help save the life of a severely injured man; and falls in love with a teenaged girl. There's also a lot of history and a bit of humor (scenes involving a belligerent camel are especially funny). But as much as I enjoyed learning about the country, the plot starts slow and doesn't really pick up until about two-thirds of the way through. And when the girl, Ellen Jaspar, finally appears, she's a total disappointment. Her beliefs, behaviors, and actions border on bizarre at times. The Note to the Reader section is especially interesting as it details the parts of the country in which the author traveled as well as certain experiences he had which he includes in one form or another in the book. Also good: The Bookseller of Kabul by Asne Seierstad, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, and Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin.
Customer Rating:
Summary: very well written
Comment: Having read Kite Runner, Sewing Circles of Herat, Reading Lolita in Tehran, the Bookseller of Kabul, and Looming Tower, I finally pulled out the old Caravans, not anticipating anything of quality. How surprised was I when I couldn't put it down. All the more interesting is the 1978 take on how much better Afghanistan was doing than in 1946, at the time the story takes place. This is certainly a colorful treasure of people and places, a well-told story of the fascinating Middle East.
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