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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Exchanging views-- a meditation on communication and history.,
By frumiousb "frumiousb" (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE) (TOP 500 REVIEWER)
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This review is from: Balthasar's Odyssey: A Novel (Paperback)
I have to confess that I did not expect to enjoy Balthasar's Odyssey. I had chosen it on the strength of The Crusades Through Arab Eyes and it was only after I bought it that I became aware of the mixed reviews and the unhappy readers.
I am pleased to say that in the end I enjoyed it quite a bit. Far from discouraging me in reading further in the Maalouf novels, it has encouraged me to think that I will enjoy the rest of his work. I will be picking up Samarkand next, I think. The key to enjoying Balthasar's Odyssey is in having the proper expectations before you read the book. Based on my two-book selection I will say that Maalouf writes history like a novelist, and novels like a historian. I can understand why so many readers were irritated. Maalouf does not tie up his loose ends. Unexplained motivations remain unexplained. Things are lost and never found again. Conversations remain unfinished and characters disappear, never to reemerge. If you are looking for a plot in a restorative Hollywood sense, you will not find it in this book. What Balthasar's Odyssey is about, fundamentally, is communication. Balthasar is a Levantine seller of books and antiquities. His family came to the Levant from Genoa, and are famous for being foreigners-- "the last Genoese to come to this part of the world." The quest for the book "The Hundredth Name" takes him on an amazing journey to Constantinople, the Mediterranean, London and France-- all in the aid of finding an answer to a question that he is not even sure needs answering. Along the way, he meets people from all over the world. He travels with a mysterious Persian prince, becomes close to a woman in London just prior to the great fire, flees through France with an Austrian emigrant, and finally has to come to terms with his "own"-- Genoese families who know him by family name rather than in person. The trip and its goal are largely incidental. The beauty of this book are in the moments of communication that Balthasar is able to find with his fellow travellers. If you set those conversations and efforts at cultural understanding against the backdrop of 1666 (the year of the beast), you have a complex and quietly cutting commentary that just as easily applies to our own time as it does to history. The translation seemed largely very good (aside from a tendancy to over-use exclamation points) and Maalouf is a very good writer. The journal form works well for the subject, but does take a little bit of persistence on the part of the reader in the beginning. I would recommend Balthasar's Odyssey to people who like intelligent historical literary fiction. It will probably appeal more to people who like Pamuk than it will to fans of Eco. A potential readers should be comfortable with non-traditional plotting and not be expecting too much in the way of resolution.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Odyssey,
By
This review is from: Balthasar's Odyssey (Hardcover)
After having read nearly all of Maalouf's books, this is one of his best. (Samarkand remains my favorite.) Odyssey is an appropriate word in the title. The protaganist makes a journey and quest with real philosophical issues. This is a Candide story, with skepticism. It is hard to put the book down at night when reading. Balthasar faces many challenges both in his quest for the book, and in love, but also about life. The reader feels for his concerns. One of the nice details is that whenever he came to a town/city he looked for and visited the local booksellers, this was in 1666. His companions on his journey help him struggle with issues. This is a book about fate and life and well worth reading.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Mediterranean Journey to the Past,
By Pat W Jusuf "Book Fanatic" (Jakarta, Indonesia) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Balthasar's Odyssey: A Novel (Paperback)
For readers expecting Mediterranean adventures, intertwined with religiously related stories, look no further. This is a story of a Genoese book trader called Balthasar Embriaco or Baldassarro Embriaco who lived near a southwestern part of Mediterranea. Christianity, Islam and Judaism were part of the everyday life in this plot set sometime between 1665-1667. The year 1666 was supposedly to be the year of the Beast. But don't expect anything as unconventional as the Da Vinci's Code by Dan Brown. This novel was written in a diary style, which the "author", Balthasar, put his daily experiences and thoughts into his dairies. In fact "he" wrote four diaries during the span of this novel. Summing it up: a romantic novel with a Mediteranean background, which the author exploited quite well, and voyages to London, Lisbon, Paris and other Mediterranean European countries. Mr. Maalouf has done an extremely detailed research prior to publishing it. I enjoyed this book very much, though not the best novel I have read. Thus, a four star.
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