Barry Unsworth's Novel "Land of Marvels": Very Well-done Historical Fiction with Layers of Fertile Cresent History

Although the word "Iraq" does not occur until the very end - literally the last word in the book - there are many not-very-subtle reminders about empires falling in Barry Unsworth's new novel Land of Marvels. Digging in 1914 in what was then an Ottoman province of Northern Mesopotamia, self-financed British archeologist John Somerville has no interest in the Ottoman, Seljuk, Abassid, or Achaemenid civilizations. Somerville is convinced that he has found the tomb of the last Assyrian king, Ashur-etil-ilani son of Ashurbanipal.

The European characters (and there is only one important Arab character in the book) are filled with foreboding of the war between European powers they feel is coming and which has made co-operation between European colonial powers planning to profit from the overthrow of the Ottomans very fragile. An American geologist Alex Elliott is looking for oil, purportedly an archaeologist looking for Hittite objects. Somerville accepts the subterfuge because he believes that Elliott's sponsor, Lord Rampling (based on the historical figure Calouste Gulbenkian), is intervening with the Turks to protect the site of the archeological dig from a railroad that the Germans are building to connect Constantinople (and Baghdad) to the Persian Gulf.

Both a German agent named Spahl (passing as a newspaper reporter) and an English major named Manning (making maps with official Ottoman permission) show up to find out what Elliott has found. Meanwhile, Elliott's self-confidence and storytelling ability have aided him in seducing Edith Somerville. And Somerville's assistant Palmer, who can read the inscriptions in Akkadian (the language of the Assyrians) becomes engaged into a suffragette named Patricia (I'm not quite sure why she is there; her outspokenness annoys Edith.)

As if there were not already enough irons in the fire and being plaid on the plains, a pair of Swedish Biblical archaeologists show up with a lease to land they have identified as the location of the Garden of Eden, with plans to build a hotel. (They do not seem to have any inkling of the war clouds...)

There are many fires involved in the story, including one presumably set by the Chaldeans who overthrew the Assyrians 25 centuries earlier, and a natural gas/crude oil with fire worshipers (seen by Elliott and Edith), and a very big explosion.

The Europeans' concerns about extraction (whether crude oil or antiquities to make a name for Somerville back in England) and exploitation (the railroad and oil-drilling projects) look forward to the post WWI creation by the English of an Iraq over which they have a "mandate" from the League of Nations, and to the Anglo-American occupation that has displaced millions of Arabs, as well as back to the none-too-popular Assyrian Empire. That empires come and go is not just ancient history (Babylon, Assyria, etc.), but not very far in the future in 1914: the Ottoman, Hapsburg, and Hohenzollern empires allied and defeated in WWI, the British and French following WWII.

The one Arab character whose character gets direct coverage, Jehar, is desperate to raise bride price. Having learned some German, he spies on the railroad builders for Somerville. He strikes me as mostly a stereotype of cupidity and mythomania (believing his own self-serving lies).

Land of Marvels is more like the expat, prototypically Raj, novels of Paul Scott and Olivia Manning than those such as Mary Lee Settle's Blood Tie, except that I didn't find any of the characters in Land of Marvels engaging

I didn't find the European characters particularly engaging, but have to admire how Unsworth, author of many historical novels including the Booker Prize-winning Sacred Hunger (1992) and the Booker short-listed Pascali's Island (1980), ties the plot lines together and provides an ending that should appeal to Hollywood. (In addition to the movie version of Pascali's Island starring Ben Kingsley as Pascali; Unsworth's 1995 novel Morality Play was filmed as "The Reckoning" starring Willem Dafoe.)