Book: The Stone Woman

Author: Tariq Ali
Publisher:

I didn’t expect this book to be reviwed, I was not much surprised when I didn’t find any reviews, so I have decided to initiate. If you don’t know who Tariq Ali is, he has written over a dozen books on world history and politics, five novels, and scripts for both stage and screen.

The Stone Woman is the third in a planned quartet of historical novels depicting the confrontation between Islamic and Christian civilizations. The first, Shadows of the pomegranate tree, the second, The book of Saladin. It’ll be good if you are into historical/political books because that’s what he actually good at.

This will be a quite difficult book to review. It involves a lot of emotions, of masters and servants, school teachers and army officers, marked by jealousies, passion, love, hatred and of a new generation which is deeply hostile to the half truths and myths of the golden days.

I picked up this book only because of its name; going through a bad time at that time, the title really captured me.

From what I managed to gather from the book, It’s the history of iskander Pasha’s family depicting the decay of the empire they have served for five hundred years. Iskander Pasha is a retired Ottoman notable, who with his family, retires to its summer palace each year when the weather in Istanbul becomes unbearable.

It is 1899 and the last great empire is in serious trouble. Iskander Pasha’s daughter, Nilofer returns home after nine years of exile with her son Orhan. Her father had forgiven her for running away with “that ugly, skinny Dimitri, Greek school inspector from Konya” as her mother calls him, he wanted to see Orhan. And Nilofer wanted to see the stone woman. Who really is the stone woman, fading traces of an ancient rock which must have been a statue of a pagan goddess? A lot can be guessed, the stone woman became the repository of all the hidden pain, enabled all the women in the house to disgorge their secrets to her. Orhan curiosity unfolds a lot of unanswered questions regarding their family history. Yusuf Pasha suffered a stroke. All the family had been summoned to his bedside from different parts of the empire. As the family begins to assemble, the darkest secrets are confided to the Stone woman.

The rest I leave for the reader to find out. Now the impact on me, personally, I like to read history but if its history itself, if it’s not elaborated. There are certain parts where you’ll be a bit skeptical about it, but you have to be open minded to accept it. It’s a story where anything is possible and everything is possible. The entire story is told by Nilofer, or confided to the Stone woman. Sometimes it just gets onto your nerves.

It’s a depiction of the clash between the history and the new generation which is deeply hostile to the myths and half-truth of the good old days. In keeping with the above, the power of THE STONE WOMAN lies in both its lyrical story telling and the challenge it poses to stereotyped images of life under Islam.

I recommend this book if you have a lot of patience and open towards ideas which are even not acceptable to you.