Ah, the happy days of the 1990s, when Americans could travel abroad fearing only natural disasters and imperfect plumbing. This rollicking first novel brings readers to some unusual localespost-Soviet Kyrgyzstan, an Apache reservation, earthquake-shattered Istanbulto tell the story of Jeff Hartig, a young man who travels the world but cant leave behind his own shortcomings. After an unhappy time running a teen center in the Apache town of Red Cliff, Ariz., recent college graduate Jeff hitches up with the Peace Corps, landing at an even more remote destinationthe Kyrgyz village of Kyzyl Adyr-Kirovka, deep in the steppes of Central Asia. The villages one asset is a defunct cheese factory funded by government subsidies, run by the ebullient, generous Anarbek Tashtanaliev, who takes it upon himself to help Jeff experience the overwhelming wonders of Kyrgyz hospitality. Anarbek also has a beautiful, English-speaking daughter named Nazira, who understands more clearly than her fellow villagers how little one American visitor can accomplish for them. Ashamed of his own ineffectualness, Jeff flees Kyrgyzstan, leaving behind one lasting impressiona pregnant Nazira. He next alights in Istanbul, where he settles once again into expatriate life, until Anarbek, Nazira and his young Apache friend Adam appear, asking Jeff to make good on all his promises of assistance. Then the 1999 earthquake hits, in a harrowing sequence that envelops the entire mismatched group and plunges Istanbul straight back into the uncivilized world. Rosenbergs ability to illustrate these oddball settingsbased on his own time in the Peace Corps and elsewhereis pitch perfect, a vibrant mix of the serious and the absurd. With Jeff, he puts a brilliant new spin on a compelling type: the Well-Meaning American.
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The lives of four people from vastly different backgrounds cross in an antic tale, which starts in Arizona and ends in Istanbul. Jeff, the gormless but likable linchpin of the story, travels from a disastrous job on a Native American reservation in the U.S. to a fruitless spell as a Peace Corps volunteer teaching English to factory workers in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan. In his travels, Jeff forges connections with an Apache youth and a Kirgiz family. Major characters are strongly depicted, although Jeff's lack of motivation remains a mystery. The basic bleakness of a book set in regions of poverty and hardship is leavened with humor rooted in cultural differences and the misunderstandings that arise from them. Plot and characterization build through the first three sections--set in Arizona and Kyrgyzstan--but fall apart in the last section, set in Istanbul during the destruction of the 1999 earthquake. Despite the overly melodramatic and pat ending, Rosenberg's modern picaresque tour is a well-written, engaging, and promising debut. Ellen Loughran
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Review
"...his descriptions are so well-rendered...journalistic, humane and heart-wrenching. Rosenberg makes the reader care for his characters." -- Christopher Buckley in The New York Times Book Review, June 6, 2004
"...often hilarious...a brave adventure into the heart of a new world...sparkling." -- Los Angeles Times Book Review, July 11, 2004
"...what a generous, big-hearted book this is...a gentle rousing by someone who understands the complicated rewards of caring." -- The Christian Science Monitor, June 15, 2004
"In Rosenberg's intriguing, often witty debut novel, two cultures half a world apart...find themselves at the crossroads of extinction." -- The Denver Post
"So how does first novelist Rosenberg manage to pull it off so beautifully?... A wonderful work; highly recommended." -- Library Journal, starred review 4/1/04, chosen as an LJ Best Debut (10/1/04)
"[An] ambitious and enchanting debut novel that sings...Filled with knowing, deadpan humor...[a] generous, perceptive vision." -- The Miami Herald, June 13, 2004x
The deft achievement of This Is Not Civilization grows out of his surehanded grasp of [the] global status game. -- Carlin Romano in the Philadelphia Inquirer, August 22, 2004
Winner of the 2005 Maria Thomas Fiction Award for Best Peace Corps Novel -- PeaceCorpsWriters.org
his descriptions are so well-rendered...journalistic, humane and heart-wrenching. Rosenberg makes the reader care for his characters. -- Christopher Buckley in The New York Times Book Review, June 6, 2004
what a generous, big-hearted book this is...a gentle rousing by someone who understands the complicated rewards of caring. -- The Christian Science Monitor, June 15, 2004
From the Inside Flap
Gripping...exotic and intimate. Every line rings with authenticity, every moment breathes with love and life and heartache. A beautiful, resonant book. - Brady Udall, author of The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint
This novel should do for us what The Quiet American did for an earlier generation -- put into perspective Americans' well-meaning but arrogant involvement in the affairs of very different cultures. Beware: you're likely to stay up all night to finish it. --Phyllis Rose, author of Parallel Lives
For the past twenty years, returned Peace Corps volunteers--Paul Theroux, Norman Rush, Maria Thomas, Richard Wiley et al--have won just about every major literary award in the country, and Robert Rosenberg seems destined to be a member of this distinguished group of writers. This Is Not Civilization is a wonderful first novel, full of the marvelous compressions and juxtapositions and clashes that have indeed made the world a very small place. --Bob Shacochis, winner of the National Book Award
This Is Not Civilization is a remarkable novel that illuminates the most important struggle of our times: to find a self and to find kindredness in a world where our shared humanity is often lost to the claims of our superficial differences. Robert Rosenberg has written not only a wonderfully readable work of fiction but also an important one. --Robert Olen Butler, winner of the Pulitzer Prize
Beautiful...Rosenberg should be thanked for his insights into Middle Eastern culture at a time when understanding of that troubled region is essential. --James Alan McPherson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize
So how does first novelist Rosenberg manage to pull it off so beautifully?... A wonderful work; highly recommended. -- Library Journal, (starred review)
About the Author
Robert Rosenberg recently finished his M.F.A. at the Iowa Writers Workshop, where he held Maytag and Teaching-Writing fellowships. Previously he served as a Peace Corps volunteer in newly independent Kyrgyzstan. He lived there for two years, and afterward the Peace Corps awarded him a fellowship to teach on the White Mountain Apache Reservation in Arizona while he completed his masters in education. He lived in Cibecue, a small Apache village, and as one of the four original teachers he helped establish the villages first high school. He also founded and edited a community magazine devoted to preserving the culture of the White Mountain Apache tribe. In 1999 he took a teaching job in Istanbul, arriving there five days before the August 17 earthquake.
