A Novel of Colonialism Reminiscent of Graham Greene

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	• The Rage of the Vulture (Norton Paperback Fiction) Barry Unsworth W. W. Norton & Company, 1995 - 443 pages average customer review:based on 9 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Better than "Sacred Hunger"

An odd, suspenseful and gripping story. It reminds of Conrad or Trollope. There is a plot, but the characters are to the fore, deeply drawn, and never faked. The suspense comes from watching the characters make choices, not just the plot. (It is NOT a post-modern novel about a novelist writing a novel about a novelist writing a novel about ... as so many modern novels are.) Better in all respects than his bestter known "Sacred Hunger."

Been there, done that

Having read this on the recommendation of a trusted friend, I found that I liked it very much --but had a few reservations re the plot. As far as the descriptions of Istanbul and surrounding areas go, Unsworth is right on the mark. I could close my eyes and know exactly where he was at any given time (Iastanbul hasn't changed much in 100 years) I found the character of Markham rather puzzling - where did he meet his Armenian fiancee,for example? For those few of us interested in Ottoman history and familiar with the polyglot population of Istanbul, this book is a treat. Don't let the rather pedestrian plot get in the way of reading yet another well-crafted historical novel.

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Actually not that gripping

Unsworth is a fabulous, I would nominate After Hannibal as my favourite, and I was hoping this would be a serious contender to that title. it really wasn't.

the main problem I felt it lacked was that none of the characters were particularly likeable - it's very difficult to sustain interest in a book when you don't actually care what happens to anyone contained in it.

however as noted by the other reviewers, it gives you a remarkable sense of place, which is an amazing talent of Unsworth. His books are set in italy, in greece, on tiny islands in the Med, in turkey and each time you can imagine he must have a particular affinity with the place to portray it so well.

usually he just tends to like his characters a little more. which at least helps when the plot unravels hopelessly at the end you find you no longer really cared.

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A Novel of Colonialism Reminiscent of Graham Greene

In RAGE OF THE VULTURE, the author of the entertaining MORALITY PLAY and the magnificent slave trade tale, A SACRED HUNGER, sets his story in turn of the 20th Century Istanbul. The world is at the edge of a major transition, and Turkey is near its epicenter. The Ottoman Caliphate has stagnated, the reigning Sultan a paranoid and nearly powerless shadow of his predecessors. The British struggle to maintain the influence of their waning Empire, the militaristic Germans are gaining influence, Moslem unrest is swelling, the Balkans are typically roiling, and genocide of the Armenians is that era's Darfur or East Timor. The advent of World War I is unseen, but its distinctive scent is in the air.

Unsworth's anti-hero main character is Robert Markham, a military attaché stationed in Turkey in 1908, in the declining years of Ottoman rule. This is actually his second tour in Istanbul, the first one ending tragically when his Armenian fiancé Miriam was raped and killed right before his eyes as he was being physically restrained. Markham's self-serving behavior during that incident has irretrievably stained his soul, marking him with a shame for which he feels compelled to atone. Now married and having a young son, Markham has never revealed to his family the details of that terrible evening.

From the books opening moments when Sultan Abdul Hamid observes Markham via telescope from within his barricaded palace and Markham feels his watching presence, we know the fates of these two characters are inextricably linked. Yet despite his better intentions, both diplomatic and humane, Markham is condemned subconsciously to re-enact with those around him the evil use of power displayed by his Kurdish captors at his fiance's brutal death. While different in degree and intent, these actions are ultimately self-serving, perhaps compensation for his impotence at those fateful moments. His marital relationship is sterile and controlling, he is distant from his own son, and he destroys his marriage and another person's life through an ill-advised affair. When his wife and son return to England without him, Markham sets out to make amends for his earlier failings only to have his every move backfire in suicides, shooting deaths, even a ruined interview. Only through self-abasement and submission to his own brutalization is Markham finally able to restore a semblance of normal life and achieve a modicum of psychic resolution.

Unsworth effectively employs several structural methods to tell his story. Interwoven throughout these events, of course, is the historical backdrop provided by the Armenian genocide and creation of the conditions that will soon release two World Wars and another European genocide. In the first half of the book, several chapters open with events taking place in the royal palace, and we see them through the Abdul Hamid's eyes. The inevitable decline of Abdul Hamid's rule mirrors the decline of Markham's personal and professional life as well as his psychological health. The two men's ultimate dispositions even sustain these parallels in the novel's final pages - comfortable but ruined individuals, emotionally sterile and withdrawn from the world around them, simply living out their years until death takes them. Other events center on Markham's son Henry and are revealed through his naïve, pre-adolescent eyes. The books two major sections are also organized differently. The first half, while Markham still has his family with him in Turkey, contains multiple chapters; the second half is a single, long block of story line, continuously accelerating toward Markham's and the Sultan's interlinked falls.

In style, tone, pace, and sense of decay and despair, THE RAGE OF THE VULTURE, calls to mind several other great authors and works. Unsworth's Markham shares the desperate search for forgiveness and redemption of Graham Greene's whiskey priest in THE POWER AND THE GLORY and the sense of European otherness in a colonial setting of Henry Scobie in THE HEART OF THE MATTER. The narrative arc of this book also mirrors in many ways a multi-month version of Lowry's single day novel of personal ruin, UNDER THE VOLCANO. Unsworth's story line rolls out slowly and gains momentum under the author's steady hand, allowing his protagonist's world to crumble around him as he searches for a suitable form of personal penance for his self-perceived cowardice and powerlessness. As with Greene's and Lowry's works, Unsworth's anti-hero is forever an outsider even in his own family life. Much as in those two great writers' work, Unsworth's setting itself becomes a powerful presence, almost an unseen character exerting not so subtle influences on their main characters.

THE RAGE OF THE VULTURE demands a certain perseverance through its 250+ pages of Part I. However, the patient reader will be amply rewarded as Unsworth's set-up of his characters' lives rapidly unfolds in parallel with historical events at the temporal juncture of changing centuries, the geographical juncture of East and West, the political juncture of colonialism and nationalism, and the religious juncture of Christianity and Islam.

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Powerful, disturbing and totally absorbing.

This novelist's themes are invariably unusual and gripping, reminiscent in some ways of Joseph Conrad in their relentless - and uncomfortable - exploration of the darker recesses of the human spirit. "The Rage of the Vulture" is set in the false dawn of the Young Turk revolution that promised so much, as it swept away the tyranny of tyranny of Abdul Hamid and which offered a brief glimpse of ethnic harmony before plunging the Ottoman Empire into yet more terrible chaos and genocide. With spare but telling detail Unsworth portrays a society, and individuals, poisoned and warped by hatred, cruelty and fear and incapable of breaking the cycle of perpetuation. The main character, an English officer on secondment in Istanbul, is no less maimed spiritually - and ultimately physically - by this unending tyranny than the most depraved torturers of the dying regime. The most memorable feature of the novel is however the extent to which the malign, self-loathing and all but invisible personality of Abdul Hamid dominates the action - and the city - from his curious bourgeois villa retreat - one hesitates to say Palace - high above the Bosphorous. By a curious turn of fate I read this novel some three months before being sent, quite unexpectedly, to live and work in Turkey and to spend long periods in Istanbul. It had already made a strong impression on me - and this became even stronger as I explored many of the locales of the action. The phrase "the banality of evil" is horribly appropriate as one spends an hour at the same kiosk in Abdul Hamid's gardens where, insisting on the farce of being incognito, he would insist on paying for his own glass of tea before hurrying back to indulge in his hobby of cabinet making, order a massacre or allow the cries of his menagerie beasts to drown out the screams of wretches being interrogated close by. Mr.Unsworth melds this background very effectively into the plot of his powerful and disturbing book, which is not only absorbing to read but impossible to forget.

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