by:
GHOSH, AMITAV

Publisher:
Vintage
Published:March 29, 1994
ISBN:0679727833
Format:Paperback
Pages:400

Description: From Publishers Weekly
In a leisurely blend of travelogue, history and cross-cultural analysis, Indian writer Ghosh reconstructs a 12th-century master-slave relationship that confounds modern concepts of slavery. Abraham Ben Yiju, a prosperous Tunisian Jewish merchant based in medieval Cairo, resettled in Aden, then spent two decades on India's Malabar Coast, where he hired a slave or servant, probably of Indian origin, named Bomma. Bomma acted as Ben Yiju's business agent and made overseas trips for him. In medieval India and the Middle East, Ghosh points out, servitude was often a career opportunity, the principal means of recruitment into privileged strata of the army and bureaucracy. Researching in letters and documents in Egypt, where he lived for several years, Ghosh ( The Shadow Lines ) evokes a world of mud-walled houses and class warfare between Egyptian laborers and landowners. He also writes vividly of southern India, a tapestry of castes, cults and worship of spirit-deities.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Description:
Reprint of a classic novel that makes the reader political boundaries and cultural assumptions. Excellent on history,Egyptian and Indian culture. by the author of Shadow lines and Glass Palace.