My 12th book - actually reaching my minimum reading target for the year with about forty days to go - was For The Love Of Philae by Christian Jacq. It's a historical novel imagining the final days of the temple at Philae, essentially the last operating pre-Christian religious community in Egypt. Because the author's sympathies are entirely with the Philae community, it's fundamentally a tragedy, most characters are dead by the end etc. It's an interesting concept but a bit of a flawed execution.
I think it probably loses a bit from being a translation, but also generally I found the style a bit tricky. We're sort of half invited into the inner lives of most of the characters: the interest of the book mainly stems from their difficulties as a network of people and their different desires, friendships, and their political, moral and theological positions between Byzantine Imperial, Christian Egyptian, and pre-Christian culture. They end up as position-avatars more than people sometimes, however: for example, the Byzantine general Narses is interesting in that he somewhat falls in love with the landscape as separate to any of the religious positions and ends up with this almost new age meditiative retreat over the course of the book, but that coupled with his generalship is really all he is: he has no relationships or past outside that which the plot demands, which is arguably efficient storytelling but sometimes makes the characters feel a bit singularly obsessive even for characters where not being singularly obsessive is meant to be a notable personality trait. The book takes place over several years, and often is perhaps a bit sparse in its presentation of individual events, preferring to spend time on reminding us of how the characters relate to things around them: the way that the ropes tighten around the community is quite matter-of-fact and slow and bureaucratic, which I get is what the author intended but it can make the whole thing a tad slow at points.
I think my other issue with the book was that it was so heavily modern. The things that characters in it seem to appreciate about ancient religion are the things that Jacq finds captivating about ancient religion, a sense of mysticism and beauty and antiquity and a feeling that Christianity was a somewhat totalitarian imposition overturning a somehow more tolerant ancient world. Conversely there are important aspects of the whole thing that are uncomfortable to say the least: the Nubian followers of non-Christian faiths are very much a generic externality and their portrayal, even granted that they are nominally on the side of the protagonists, is as a racialised, autocthonous, noble savage type group.
But anyway, an interesting if flawed read.
