And just finished yesterday with the other book of the pair that Glaur lent me, Hav by Jan Morris. Hav is in fact two books, published in one volume; nominally the second part, Hav of the Myrmidons, is the sequel to the first, longer section, Last Letters From Hav. I say nominally because they differ a great deal...
Last Letters from Hav is the part I enjoyed more of the two, and is something of a masterpiece of creative setting design. Set in a powerfully believable, but in fact wholly fictional, eastern Mediterranean city-state, the book is written as a series of travelogues. The main character, who is presented as being Jan herself, becomes immersed for a few months in this somewhat mysterious place, with some of its own traditions but largely with a wide mix of languages, culture, and history from across the region. Had I not known both through being told and through having a solid mental map of the Turkish coastlines, I would fairly quickly have realised that Hav was fictitious - there are just a few too many of the Mediterranean's civilisations in one place for plausibility, and the Russian and Chinese elements in Hav's history are a bit stretched for a Mediterranean city - but then, I am a historian of the region, and the history of Hav was nonetheless well written enough to enchant me. If I was being utterly picky, I'd have liked a bit more focus on the Levantine, Caucasian, Balkan and Turkish elements, and to reverse the odd omission of Byzantium, via which the travelogue could have been enriched with fewer stretches... but then again the only people who write books to pitch to historians of the Near East are other historians thereof, and we make, as a rule, little to no money from doing so. I do want to make clear that the depth of detail and scale of the historical construction are breathtaking - the events of Hav's history encompass the full richness of the region's history and so much of what makes it both magical and tragic at once. Not only that, but the book explores effectively the constructed nature of that history and what seems immemorially ancient being filtered through different eyes - the ancient call of Missakian's trumpet, the first sound of a Hav morning, is slowly shifted from a picture of continuity since the twelfth century to an appreciation of how much more recent elements have affected the presumed 'ancient' tradition. This sort of layering around events and traditions is one of the most real feeling and most clever parts of the book, and it's definitely something I think is under-done in literature generally.
As well as the historical elements, there is a distinct Havian culture and a kaleidoscope of personalities and mysteries, many of which end up not quite getting unravelled before the book's ending. The mixture of local and international intellectuals, officials, bar staff, and more who make up the cast are often very believable and human, but also form more than the sum of their parts, combining to a general sense of layered identity, secrecy, and lack of straightforwardness (despite being in many cases surprisingly open to talking) that is given as distinctly Havian. The city’s iconography, with a maze being one of its fundaments, stands as an additional winking testament to this. The tone becomes a touch orientalising in places, with Hav playing the role of Mysterious Eastern Other, but there is sufficient detail and openness to counterbalance this for the most part. The local people known as Kretevs, as no doubt the author intended, are a particularly fun detail, and echo a variety of real peoples across Anatolia and the Caucasus whose culture and in many cases even language are isolated remnants that have survived, just about, to the present day.
Hav of the Myrmidons is a different book. It is again a short travelogue, set twenty years after the first, but only covering a matter of days. Gone is almost all of Hav's history: on the return trip, the city has changed beyond recognition, and the protagonist begins to try and unscramble what has happened, but leaving the reader with few certainties even on points that would have been entirely common knowledge (in particular, it is never stated who the Intervention was conducted by and to what planned end). It shifts also to a more purely fictional tone, with the city much, much more obviously fictitious and a curious mystery from late in the first book blown up into an almost cartoonish menace for the second. It is a darker book, too, with Hav noticeably having changed for the worse for the most part. The writing is still effective, but the plot is abrupt, the character confused, and pointed lack of resolution is an important theme of the piece. Curiously, Last Letters from Hav, the much older book of the two in reality, feels timeless and still readable - Hav of the Myrmidons feels dated, despite being from the mid 2000s. This is, mainly, because of the different sets of concerns expressed: Last Letters is a book about unravelling history and a living, breathing society that lives with the past at its back, whilst Hav of the Myrmidons is about many of the specific concerns and worries that gripped liberal westerners in the mid 2000s. Terrorism, a squeaky-clean state corporatism that knows where to hide its bodies, religious fundamentalism, intrigue, the mix of a western-friendly exterior and shining glass masking a choking of dissent - it all feels very much the world of Blair and Bush and the anxieties involved in that, not just in the setting but the way the setting is viewed. The conundrums of unravelling the past have not changed all that much in their fundaments since 1985, but the fears of the present have undeniably done so.
Overall, I think Hav is a beautiful book and I’d massively recommend it. It manages to be cleverly observational and build up a sense of place beautifully, with fantastic and assured grasp of reference and history which is stunning in breadth.
