Customer Reviews

A Delightful Compendium of Consolation: A Fabulous Tale of Romance, Adventure and Faith in the Medieval Mediterranean

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First, let me say that I cannot think of anything that I would change about this book. "A Delightful Compendium" is historical fiction in the form of letters imagined as part of the Cairo Geniza manuscripts. At first, I thought that using nothing but letters and journal entries to tell the story (stories) would wear thin and become a bit tedious after awhile. However, once adjusted to the absence of a narrator, I realized that I had begun to `open' each letter with anticipation. I have read stories and novels written in this way before, and found the form limiting and somewhat frustrating. I do not know what magic Visotzky uses here, but I found myself fully engaged within the first 60 or 70 pages, and from then on, never felt a lull in the telling of the tale.

"A Delightful Compendium" contains the story of the al-Tustaris, a Jewish merchant family living in Cairo under Muslim rule in the 11th century. Central to the story is Karimah, the daughter who has left home with a boyfriend; Dunash, her father, who now considers Karimah dead and maintains regular correspondence with Nissim, a friend, teacher, and trading partner in north-west Africa; and Karimah's brother, Iskander, to whom Karimah writes letters in confidence. Woven together in the resulting bundle of letters are stories of Karimah's adventures, Talmudic stories and Torah wisdom from the sages, and the story of how the al-Tustari family copes with Karimah's departure and the difficulties of trade in a dangerous time and place. All of this is cast with the Muslim majority culture in the background, which quite naturally becomes crucial to the al-Tustari family story. Though I was concerned when I started this novel (especially given the academic credentials of the author), I found that not being of either the Jewish nor Muslim cultures which are central to this story was not a handicap at all. The storytelling is plain spoken and clear, and Visotzky provides a helpful glossary and source notes which are clearly intended to help the `gentile' reader (not too surprising given Visotsky's work in Jewish/Christian/Muslim relations).

I have to say that I was somewhat frustrated by Iskander's silence in the first part of this book, as he only appears as the silent recipient of letters from Karimah or as the voice of his father in correspondence with Nissim. However, when Iskander does appear personally in letters to Karimah and Nissim later in the book, the impact of his letters is magnified by the early silence. I found myself responding emotionally to Iskander's first few personal letters, and he quickly becomes, in my mind, the sympathetic protagonist of the story: heroic in his dedication to duty. That being said, all of the letter writers are fully human - faults, blind-spots, and all. Including these blemishes along with the characters' determination to stay in community with each other and their dedication to their faith help to create fully 3-dimensional persons despite the limitations of the letter/journal format.

In short, an easily accessible peek into 11th century Jewish culture in North Africa in the form of an engaging story of family and community.

Set in early medieval northern Africa, the book evokes an exotic atmosphere with caravans, rabbinic tales, a rebellious daughter, an outraged father, pirates, Bedouins and more. Burton Visotzky has crafted a novel that consists primarily of letters sent to and from the principal characters in the novel. Despite the letter format, the characters became people that I cared about. The author has also created a great sense of place either through the descriptions one character gives to another of a place he is visiting, or by being dropped in casually as Karima's complaint about the heat in Kairawan (Tunisia) when she was pregnant.
The novel centers on the relationship between the rebellious Karima who runs away from home and her younger brother, Iskander, who is left to help his father with the family business. Other principal characters are Karima and Iskander's father and a close friend and business associate, Rabbi Nissim. Additional characters are deftly woven in and out of the letters as the scenes and events change.
The rabbinic tales that Rabbi Nissim sends to Dunash (Karima's father) to console him as he mourns the loss of his daughter add an additional dimension to the novel. The stories enhance the narrative and may provide comfort to readers who are experiencing losses of their own. The reader is kept on the edge of his seat, rapidly flipping pages to see what happens to Karima and her family next. I highly recommend this 'delightful' book, even if you're not a medievalist.

This book is the documentation of letters between a Jewish fictional woman in the Middle Ages as she travels and trades throughout the Levant. It gives insight into living and trade conditions of the times. However, it is difficult to get into. If one persists beyond the first 75 pages, it is delightful and informative reading.