Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
It’s about the author researching these documents that originally came to Cambridge University out of Egypt, and they are all documents pertaining to Jews who were based in Egypt but were travelling to do business in Southern India in medieval times. He writes extremely beautifully about life in an Egyptian village where he stays and the people he meets.
In an Antique Land, Amitav Ghosh.
He’s a much better writer of factual books than fiction. It’s about him researching these documents that originally came to Cambridge University out of Egypt, and they are documents pertaining to Jews who were based in Egypt but were travelling to do business in Southern India in medieval times. He writes extremely beautifully about life in an Egyptian village where he stays and the people he meets, and the stress when their young men are caught up in the war between Iraq and Iran. It’s an amazing story really and it’s amazing how these documents were preserved. Apparently, for Jews it’s considered wrong to throw away documents that have God’s name written on them, so they had these huge boxes the size of houses in Cairo and if you wanted to get rid of anything you just threw it into these and they accumulated over centuries and centuries. It’s extraordinary that they survived in this way. So it’s a personal piece of historical research. He eventually goes to India as well and tries to find connections with people who had gone over there.
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Roy Moxham is the author of Outlaw: India’s Bandit Queen and Me, A Brief History of Tea, an updated edition of Tea: Addiction, Exploitation and Empire, The Great Hedge of India, and The Freelander. A former tea planter in Nyasaland and later Malawi, he spent 13 years in Eastern Africa before becoming Senior Conservator of the Senate House Library, University of London.
