B U R E A U O F P U B L I C S E C R E T S |
The Epic of Gilgamesh [ca.
2500/1200 BC]
This ancient Mesopotamian
story is the first surviving fictional narrative,
and still one of the best. Many of the central themes of later literature — the
joys of love and friendship, the pains of separation and death — are already
treated here in a moving and powerful manner.
The historical king Gilgamesh lived around 2800
BC. Sumerian texts about him
turn up a few centuries later, followed by variant versions in several other
languages, culminating in the “standard” Akkadian version ca. 1200
BC.
Penguin has a very readable version by N.K.
Sandars, collating the
various fragmentary texts into a single prose tale. Sticking closer to the
original is a fine verse translation of the “standard” text by John Gardner
and John Maier. If you want to explore the source texts in greater detail, the recent edition by Andrew George gives literal translations of several
different versions, incorporating newly discovered fragments. All of these
editions include lots of fascinating background information.
[Rexroth essay on Gilgamesh]
The Mahabharata [ca.
3rd century BC]
This is one of the world’s greatest epics. It is so immense (eight times the
length of The Iliad and The Odyssey combined!) and so full of
digressive interpolations that few Western readers are ever likely to read the
whole thing. I recommend William Buck’s abridged prose translation, which
confines itself to the main story line.
The Ramayana [ca.
3rd century BC]
This is the other great epic of India. While The Mahabharata, like
The Iliad, is primarily a story of war, The Ramayana is a more
“folkloristic” adventure, full of monsters and enchantments but also with more
elaborate and subtle scenes of domestic life, and thus might be considered
somewhat analogous to The Odyssey. But there
are far more differences than similarities, as one might
expect from such different cultures.
Again, I recommend William Buck’s abridged prose version.
Omar Khayyam, The Rubaiyat
[11th century]
The Sufis have tried to claim Omar Khayyam as one of their own, but it is
more likely that these poems are just what they seem to be: the expression of a
very skeptical, unorthodox and worldly-wise individual.
Read the classic Edward FitzGerald translation, then if you’re interested
compare it with one of the more modern and literal versions.
Arabian Nights [The Thousand and One Nights]
[ca. 14th
century]
For sheer
wealth and variety of escapist entertainment, this is
one of the greatest
collections of stories ever put together. It incorporates
more than a thousand years of tales from all over the Middle East and in some
cases even from India.
The stories are far more “adult” (in both senses
of the word) than you might suppose if you read only a children’s version of
Aladdin or Ali Baba. Be sure to get an unexpurgated edition. The two volumes of selections
translated by Husain Haddawy are probably the best. If you want more, you can delve into one of the complete editions. Richard Burton’s, the most widely reproduced, is vigorous
though sometimes rather eccentric. (Burton’s own life,
incidentally, was also a series of incredible adventures — see Edward Rice’s
biography, Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton.)
Albert Cossery, Novels [1913-2008]
This remarkable Egyptian author moved to France and wrote in French, but his
eight short novels all take place in the Middle East. Perfectly narrated with
wry irony, they mostly concern the submerged multitude, beggars, thieves,
prostitutes, itinerant artisans, small-time merchants, living out their lives
in the slums and markets of Cairo. The first and still one of the best is Men
God Forgot. Occasionally, most notably in The Jokers (La violence
et la dérision) and A Splendid Conspiracy, a few of the characters concoct subtle pranks to play on the
ruling powers. But for the most part they just hang out. The Lazy Ones is
in fact about a family of which most of the members do almost literally nothing
whatsoever. Scarcely more active are the protagonists of Proud Beggars or
the inhabitants of The House of Certain Death, an ancient tenement which
is liable to collapse at any moment and which is clearly a symbol of the old
social order, rotten to the core and ready to fall if the perennial
“wretched of the earth” ever really revolt. The seventh novel (the
only one that has not been translated), Une ambition
dans le désert, takes place in a Gulf oil
sheikdom. The last one, The Colors of Infamy, which returns to the
usual Cairo setting, is distinctly shorter than the others and was probably
brought to a premature conclusion due to Cossery’s terminal illness.
B. Traven, The Death Ship
[1934]
Traven was such a
secretive person that until recent years it was not known who he really was.
Extensive research finally revealed that he was originally a German anarchist
who escaped from Germany following the repression of the post-World War I
revolutionary movement. After some wanderings he ended up in Mexico, where he
lived the rest of his life in seclusion, using an amusingly large number of
different assumed names. (This is the view presented
in Will Wyatt’s The Secret of the
Sierra Madre: The Man Who Was B. Traven. I believe that this view is now
generally accepted, although other books and
articles have espoused somewhat different theories.)
The Death Ship is a superb hard-boiled narrative about a down-and-out
American sailor, stranded in the ports of Europe, who is shanghaied onto a
death ship — i.e. a dilapidated old ship that the owners plan to sink in
order to collect the insurance. Only the officers are let in on the secret. In
order to make it look like an accident, the
crew must be kept in the dark (and will thus go down with the ship). . . .
Most of Traven’s other novels are based on Mexican revolutionary history
(particularly in Chiapas, which was already a hotbed of revolt over a century
ago). Try The Rebellion of the Hanged or General from the Jungle. Another excellent but more apolitical
novel is The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
Gabriel García Márquez,
One Hundred Years of Solitude [1967]
A fascinating novel,
generally considered the masterpiece of Latin American
“magical realism.”
Section from Gateway to the Vast Realms: Recommended
Readings from Literature to Revolution, by Ken Knabb (2004).
No copyright.
Bureau of Public Secrets, PO Box 1044, Berkeley CA 94701, USA
www.bopsecrets.org knabb@bopsecrets.org