'The handsomest young man in England'

Jill Dawson's latest, The Great Lover, is a fictionalised account of the latter years of Rupert Brooke's life, the English poet who died tragically of septicemia during the First World War. He is most well-known for his poem "The Soldier", which has the lines:

"If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England."

The following is a brief biography of Brooke from a website:

Rupert Brooke was born in Rugby, Warwickshire, where his father taught classics and was a housemaster at Rugby School. In his childhood Brooke immersed himself in English poetry and twice won the school poetry prize. In 1906 he went to King's college, Cambridge, and became friends with G.E. Moore, Lytton Strachey, Maynard Keynes, Roger Fry, and Leonard Fry, members of the future Bloomsbury Group. In 1910 Brooke's father died suddenly, and Brooke was for a short time in Rugby a deputy housemaster. Thereafter Brooke lived on an allowance from his mother. In 1911 he worked on a thesis on the playwright John Webster and the Elizabethan drama, and travelled in Germany and Italy. In England he was a leader of a group of young 'Neo-pagans', who slept outdoors, embraced a religion of nature, and swam naked - among others Virginia Woolf joined the swimmers in Grantchester. However, sex was something that was not part of the fun - "We don't copulate without marriage, but we do meet in cafes, talk on buses, go on unchaperoned walks, stay with each other, give each other books, without marriage," Brooke once told to his friend.

It is this fertile period of Brooke's life that Dawson fictionalises in The Great Lover. Nell Golightly is a maid at the Old Vicarage in Grantchester. The house is famous for hosting artistic types and one summer, it plays guest to Brooke. To Nell, the upright daughter of a bee-keeper, Brooke and his circle represent the waywardness of artists — a fundamental difference from her staid maidishness — which, while she resents, Nell is also drawn to.

The book pays hearty tribute to Brooke's politics, his many left-leaning causes that ended with a whimper, and yet, which also made him overlook class divides and appreciate the repressed intelligence of Nell. Their romance, never spoken of, is that drip-drip pattter of subdued tension that ends in a night of emotionally charged lovemaking.

But more than anything else, the novel is a tribute to a way of life, a freedom that encompasses magnanimous love yet refuses to be tied town, sometimes to shocking effects. The long line of Brooke's conquests—men and women—are ever-present in the background, hurtling in and out of Brooke's racing conscious. Dawson has exonerated Brooke of any scheming though. As Nell tells him tenderly at one point, yes, there are two kinds of people: those who marry and those who can't.

For, there could have been no scheming. Not from one whose pen emitted these lines:

...Oh, never a doubt but, somewhere, I shall wake,
And give what's left of love again, and make
New friends, now strangers... But the best I've known
Stays here, and changes, breaks, grows old, is blown
About the winds of the world, and fades from brains
Of living men, and dies.
Nothing remains.

O dear my loves, O faithless, once again
This one last gift I give: that after men
Shall know, and later lovers, far-removed,
Praise you, "All these were lovely"; say "He loved".

(From "The Great Lover" by Rupert Brooke)

Dawson's book has the pallor of tragedy hanging over it, as the reader accompanies Brooke through his nervous breakdown and his visit to Tahiti where he will find succour in Taatamata, a local woman he will eternalise in his poetry—and his subsequent return to England. But all this is known before-hand and when the book ends with a haunting letter Brooke wrote to a friend a few days before his death, it is all a bit too much to bear.

A playful, highly affecting novel!

A brief history of man

The narrative of human evolution, in spite of Darwin and his Origin of Species, is a discontinuous mishmash that gives us only a broad outline of who we are and where we come from. The evidence for the study of human evolution is derived primarily from fossils, which can give insights into the existence of in-between species — the ones that provide the missing links in the evolution of man.

Hamburg in Germany is the site of an annual fossil fair where scientists, private collectors, dealers and locals converge in December every year to peddle their pre-historic wares. Jorn Hurum, associate professor of paleontology at the Natural History Museum at the University of Oslo, is a regular at the fair, visiting every year in the hope of adding to the museum’s substantial collection.

In 2006, Hurum and a museum colleague were milling around the table of Thomas Perner, a prominent dealer. Hurum had had a long association with Perner, and so, when the latter asked him to meet up for a drink later that day, with a mischievous twinkle in his eye, Hurum acceded readily.

Over drinks, Perner explained to Hurum that a private collector seeking anonymity had given him six months to sell a rare find. Perner opened an envelope and showed Hurum a high-resolution colour photograph of a complete fossil skeleton. The photograph was of Ida (so named by Hurum later), fossilised after her death.

Ida is the world-renowned 47-million-year-old primate ancestor whose perfectly fossilised remains were shown to Hurum on that fateful December day. Her discovery is massively important to science because she could provide the crucial missing link in the evolution of primates. It was during the Eocene (56 million years to 34 million years ago) that a spilt in two distinct primate groups had occurred, leading to the existence of humankind.

Because of gaps in fossil records, paleontologists have had to hypothesise about what happened after the primitive primate. Their best guess so far had been that by 40 million years ago there were two distinct primate groups: those with wet noses—lemurs and lorises; and those with dry noses—tarsiers, apes, monkeys and humans. It was Ida that could explain the split in primate evolution.

Barely a year old at the time of her death, Ida died while drinking from a lake in what was then a tropical rain forest. A volcanic eruption engulfed the area surrounding the lake and the dense gas it released rendered Ida unconscious. Her limp body fell into the lake, settling in the sediment at the bottom, which over time, congealed into oily shale. A perfect accident had created the conditions for long-term preservation.

The site where this occurred is located near the village of Messel in Germany. Called the Messel Pit, it is a rich source of fossils from the Middle Eocene period. Up until the beginning of the twentieth century, the Messel Pit was chiefly a quarry, mined by coal prospectors looking to convert the shale into raw petroleum.

However, beginning 1966, formal excavations were undertaken by paleontologists and archaeologists in the Messel Pit. “Fossils of horses, fish, bats and crocodiles perfectly frozen in time were unearthed and preserved. In many cases, complete skeletons were preserved, along with bacterial imprints of hair, feathers, scales and even internal organs,” writes Tudge.

By 1971, mining had ceased in the area and it became open hunting ground for scientists and private collectors alike. Sometime in 1982, a private collector from Frankfurt, while splitting the layers of shale, “stumbled on a fossil of what looked like an exotic monkey crushed to the thickness of a silver dollar.” He took it home and preserved it, away from the eyes of science and the public, until twenty-five years later, when advancing age made him approach Perner.

The Link is the gripping account of how Hurum set about meeting the $1 million price tag on Ida—seeking the assistance of the Oslo museum whose director remarked, “We’re not a museum known around the world like the Louvre, but this could be our Mona Lisa”; authenticating the fossil by means of X-rays and CT scans; and clearing legal hurdles to enable the specimen to leave Germany.

Fans of Bill Bryson and Stephen Jay Gould may find the book lacking in flamboyance, but Tudge’s subject matter makes up for any deficit in flair. There are brilliant illustrations in the book, including three-dimensional images of Ida’s skeleton and close shots of her last meal. Tudge builds on the massiveness of the findings to argue about the need for humans to preserve the environment—there is an amusing, yet gravid, comparison of time lines to drive home the magnitude of destruction that human beings have wreaked in their rather minuscule time on earth.

Web-crazed zombies all?

Which is the single largest recruiting ground that terrorists use to lure gullible people into their nefarious dens? Mosques, I hear you say. Only that is wrong. It's websites, hundreds of thousands of them, says James Harkin, Director of Talks at the ICA in London, in this stimulating new book.

Even as we cheer on young Iranian students using Twitter and other Web 2.0 technologies for raising their collective voice against Iran's botched electoral outcome, Harkin cautions us to keep in mind the many dangerous side-effects that this openness has entailed.

He does so by pointing us to the visual, albeit very real, domain of Cyburbia — "the place we go when we spend too much time hooked up to other people via a continuous loop of electronic information."

Harkin begins by introducing the concept of cybernetics whose founder was the redoubtable Norbert Wiener of MIT, who famously declined to join the Manhattan Project. Derived from control theory, cybernetics is the study of closed systems, where the feedback from the system is fed into a loop, resulting in the system modifying itself based on the feedback input.

During the Second World War, Wiener was distressed at the failure of British anti-aircraft gunners to shoot down German aircraft hovering the British sky. The problem was the circuitous routes that the German aircraft took to dodge detection. The British tracking system was just not up to the task of factoring in the bomber's zigzag motion in its calculation.

Wiener, working with complex mathematical models, came to the conclusion that the information feedback loop between the Luftwaffe bomber and the anti-aircraft gunner was not fast enough, resulting in rising failures. If only the bomber's movement was suitably estimated, Wiener calculated, the accuracy of the gunner's aim would improve dramatically.

While Wiener's work would have little bearing on the British war effort, his ideas came to be rapidly accepted in the broader social sciences, especially among the countercultural idealists of the 1960s. These pioneers imagined the establishment of a global "electronic village of authentic information and perfect understanding" based on cybernetics.

One such pioneer was Marshall McLuhan, the man who coined the memorable phrase: "The medium is the message." McLuhan, Harkin reminds us, was the progenitor of the idea of the internet, predicting the setting up of a giant electronic loop which will connect things and people in a smorgasbord of anytime connectivity.

Harkin dovetails the rise of the internet to cybernetics by exploring the way Google searches — the search results on the website’s first few pages drive our knowledge/views on any given topic. The more popular a site, the higher its chance of being shown on the first page of search results, resulting in an endless loop where a few, highly-visited sites govern our consumption of ideas.

It is in this vein that Harkin builds his central argument. The internet has engendered a herd-like instinct which dresses up McLuhan's original dictum in a less glamorous interpretation. The content, never much important, is less so today—so long as one feels connected to a wider community. Which is why, Harkin seems to chide, seemingly normal adults can waste hours playing childish games and scoring themselves against one another on Facebook.

Welcome to Cyburbia, where youngsters share music and movies illegally on peer-to-peer networks, even as governments struggle to contain newer, more blatant forms of piracy. "The peer-to-peer architecture started out as a hippie cri de coeur at the conformism of post-war American life, but the layout of Cyburbia encourages us to conform to the opinion of our electronic peers," Harkin laments.

The rise of Cyburbia has entailed the easy availability of porn, much of it free and user-generated. The other tragic manifestation of the internet, in Harkin's view, is the global rise of opinion-making, with sundry blogs bloviating on serious topics with no editorial control.

However, in Harkin's view, none of this compares with the curious case of so-called medieval terrorists using the latest technologies to spread their message of hate, or down-and-out lonely souls exploiting the internet's seductive anonymity to enter suicide pacts.

But is this the whole picture? Clearly not. The rise of the internet has brought about several positive transformations, and the abuse of any technology cannot be reason enough to decry it. If the internet allows terrorists to group, it also lets ordinary citizens in non-democratic societies to get their views across. Why else does China set such great store by banning websites?

Perhaps then, it is enough to take Harkin at his word, and support him on how the ubiquitous use of the internet is playing havoc with not just our attention spans and social lives, but also our freedom to know and choose. Indeed, a new question is already upon us: What next?

Removing old veneers

Is it merely a coincidence that just as Pakistan re-emerges on America’s security map as a nation to watch, its writers are churning out consistently good fiction at a surprisingly fast rate?

The past few months have seen the launch of Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamsie, In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin, and The Wasted Vigil by Nadeem Aslam, besides several other notable books by Pakistani writers in the recent past.

To this list can now be added The Wish Maker, the debut work of 24-year-old Ali Sethi. Sethi is the son of renowned Pakistani journalists Najam Sethi and Jugnu Mohsin, the couple who have run afoul of Pakistani authorities at several times in the past for running The Friday Times, an independent newsweekly published out of Lahore.

It is the nature of the household that Ali grew up in, perhaps, that provides a ready template for his novel. The story revolves around Zaki Shirazi, a young, free-spirited Pakistani boy who grows up amidst a cast of strong female characters.

There is Zakia, his mother, a crusading journalist who also happens to be the editor of Women’s Journal, a publication which, by its very name, must invite trouble sooner or later in a conservative society. This is especially so when Zakia refuses to “behave” at all like a widow, her husband dead in an air crash when she was pregnant with Zaki.

Contrasted with Zakia’s character is Daadi, Zaki’s grandmother, who only bears Zakia’s many “digressions” because she has given her a grandson. Strong-willed women both, Daadi and Zakia are locked in a permanent battle of wits.

And there is Samar Api, Zaki’s cousin, a girl ill-suited to the conventions imposed by society on how proper Muslim girls must conduct themselves. Zaki and Samar have been inseparable from childhood, but as adolescence approaches, the personal and the political must collide in a society that will not allow the two to remain together.

Sethi writes with real feeling for a Lahore that was cosmopolitan and welcoming. The reader can sense the disquiet that liberal, Western-educated Pakistanis like him must feel at the downward spiral that their country has fallen into. The Wish Maker is a product of love, both for the craft of fiction and for what it lets us remember and keep forever.

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This review is slated to appear in Chicago Sun Times.

Pictures of a mundane Pakistan

Given its volatile leadership and questionable contribution to the global war on terror, Pakistan is in the news for all the wrong reasons. Yet a new breed of writers from that country have quietly but firmly begun to make their presence felt in the English-speaking world. Mohsin Hamid and Nadeem Aslam, authors of The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Wasted Vigil, respectively, immediately spring to mind.

To this list can now be added Daniyal Mueenuddin. Raised in Pakistan and educated in the United States, he has long regaled readers with short stories in the New Yorker, Zoetrope and other literary magazines. Now they are in this fascinating collection chronicling the everyday ironies and cruelties of a place too used to being in the news for earth-shifting events.

The world of In Other Rooms, Other Wonders is as much the feudal hinterland of Pakistan as the cosmopolitan cityscape of Karachi and Lahore. The eight stories revolve, in one way or the other, around K.K. Harouni, landowner of a vast estate in the southern Punjab province. The title story follows Harouni's illicit affair with an impoverished distant relative, in a world where joys transmogrify suddenly into catastrophes. When Harouni dies, the poor woman is thrown out of the estate by his daughters. She, after all, has no locus standi.

In "Saleema", another story that points to the grim state of women in rural Pakistan, a young woman escapes a childhood of deprivation to move into the servants' quarters of the Harouni estate with her husband. But her state in her new home is no better. Reduced to looking after her drug addict spouse and passing her days in menial drudgery, Saleema's life has moved from one calamity to the next.

In the collection's latter half, Mueenuddin moves to the city-bred relatives of Harouni, people who "knew everyone of a certain class in Karachi, went to dinners and to the polo and to all the fashionable weddings, flew often to Lahore and Islamabad, and summered in London." Yet, traditionalism rears its head when matters of life and death — and love — are involved. In Our Lady of Paris, an American in love with a Pakistani man (they met at Yale) must contend with the latter's domineering mother who disapproves of the alliance.

Mueenuddin's prose aptly captures South Asian nuances, not just in dialect and cultural habits, but also in modes of thinking and relating. That is reason enough to pick up this collection from a writer destined to win greater laurels.

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This review appeared in St Petersburg Times.

The changing nature of threats

Would a sane person abide any commonality in the mindsets of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and the strategists of Hezbollah, the Lebanese Islamist outfit? Well, that is the jaw-dropping case that Joshua Cooper Ramo, a former journalist-turned-Managing Director at Kissinger Associates, makes in his new book—and he makes it well.

The Age of the Unthinkable follows the tried and tested Gladwellian territory: set out a grand theory and bolster it with crisp, real-life examples. But it avoids the latter’s worst excesses. While Gladwell is less successful with his attempts at pop-science, Ramo, painting a broader canvas, is a decidedly more muscular writer.

Gladwell tends to base his theories on hunches and wayward analogising, for instance, faulting the higher number of Korean air crashes in the 1990s to a culture of subservience, in Outliers. Consequently, he arrives at conclusions that would not withstand scientific scrutiny. Ramo, on the other hand, relies on chaos theory and disruptive innovation to write a book that’s more Black Swan than Outliers—tipping his hat to the unpredictability of ground-shifting events in geopolitics, economics, sociology and science.

The central idea of the book is the sand pile effect: if you piled sand, grain by grain, into the shape of an inverted cone, sooner or later, the tiny pyramid would give way. The question is when? How does one know at what precise moment the precarious balance that keeps sand grains together in perfect harmony will yield a minor avalanche?

Ramo uses this example to drive home the point that small events (the putting together of sand grains) can lead to momentous consequences (the entire pile destroying)—and if this can be true for a tiny sand pile, imagine the scope of its applicability to real-life phenomena of much greater complexity (Ramo quotes the breakup of the Soviet Union and the pack-of-cards collapse of US financial giants in 2008).

Ramo furthers his case by pointing out the fallacy of the adage: “Democracies do not fight among themselves,” first propounded by American sociologist Dean Babst. Inherent to this statement is the understanding that the idea of democracy is for the greater, common good and its widespread dissemination would usher in everlasting peace.

But this is not always true, says Ramo. Apart from America’s misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan being obvious irritants, he also states: “Without a basis of economic development, without a culture of politics that fits democratic discourse, becoming democratic was often a guarantee of instability. Democratising Arab countries, for instance, might not make them less militant—particularly given cultures that tended to thrive on violent conflict.”

The scales can tip any moment, says Ramo, as on 9/11 when one gigantic, mind-numbing event went on to have protracted consequences. The notion of a “quick fix war”, Ramo asserts, has as little relevance today as at any point in history — violent insurgencies and quixotic hopes of seeding democracy can play havoc with the most fool-proof military strategies.

It is left to global policymakers and heads of government, then, to not fall into the familiar trap of “looking for answers”, when such crises require a complete remapping of how they are approached. For Ramo, China is the only nation that comes close to displaying the mindset that a new-age nation must adopt to survive. Perhaps it’s the split nature of the country’s raison d’être — an undemocratic, yet strong growth driver — that has kept the Middle Kingdom on its toes and kept it prepared for all eventualities. Ramo lavishes encomiums on China’s unstoppable juggernaut.

It is this—the quality to adapt—that makes Ramo liken the Silicon Valley startups to Hezbollah. If Google does not rest on its laurels and constantly innovates to give the world fascinating, new products, Hezbollah too has tapped the inverted glamour of suicide bombing to reinvent itself in its battle with Israel.

Having spent time in a Hezbollah outpost in Lebanon, Ramo returns impressed. “Spend time with Hezbollah, and you see it’s possible to run the most sophisticated cellular network and be willing to blow yourself up. We have to accept that and not think that if we make people modern, we make them Western. That’s not the case at all,” he says in an interview.

A few false notes, however, mar this smooth inquiry. While he is engagingly articulate at enumerating the dangers of our complex new world, Ramo’s remedies read more like nostrums. For a book that directs the reader to appreciate the many pitfalls of falling for stereotypes, Ramo’s prescriptions follow old terrain. Somewhere in there, though, there is an interesting study of how Eastern thought—of addressing problems in context without confrontation—is the way forward.

The Age of the Unthinkable is a stimulating read in the tradition of Nassim Nicholas Taleb, which backs up its pessimism with solid facts and, only much later, gossamer stirrings of hope.

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This review will appear in the June 15 edition of Business Standard.

Crime and atonement

Serious Things is one of the most acutely observed psychological thrillers I have come across. It concerns itself with the life of Bruno Jackson, a 30-something gay civil servant who spends his days in a lonely simulacrum of a real life. Initially, Bruno's dissatisfaction with the general scheme of things seems tedious but as the novel progresses, Norminton unravels, with enticing precision, the reasons behind Bruno's apathy.

The novel is divided in "Then" and "Now", alternating chapters/sections meant to give us insights into the two profound elements of Bruno's life—an incident from the past and the present, the all-consuming present, permanently affected by the past.

"Then" deals with the early '90s, when Bruno arrives at a posh school on the South Downs. There he is befriended by Anthony Blunden, a rakish young boy with an interest in poetry. Bruno falls inconceivably in love with Anthony, and Norminton uses the familiar literary trope of the nostalgic English school setting to drip the one-sided affair in intensity.

The two artistically inclined boys are welcomed into the house of Mr Bridge, their English teacher, who serves them poetry and biscuits. The trio has much in common—the boys, their enthusiasm; the teacher, his infectious knowledge. The meetings turn into elongated sessions of merrymaking and laughter, and such a setting must inevitably tip into an embarrassed situation, so critical for a novel of this type.

Anthony writes a novel caricaturising members of the school—its staff, students, wardens, dean. Expecting lavish praise for what he thinks is a work of great precocity, Anthony is aghast to learn Mr Bridge’s uncomplimentary views on his work.

The relationship between the boys and the teacher deteriorates, and with time, the bitterness that Anthony, and adventitiously, Bruno feel for Mr Bridge assumes a character that will only be satiated by something drastic. And so it is.

On to "Now", and the ghost of those school days, meant to be an unforgettable halcyon period, haunts Bruno, even as a chance encounter with Anthony at a common friend's party brings home to him the utter normalcy that envelopes Anthony's life, much against his own. A beautiful wife, a successful career, the works—is it merely a matter of a restless conscience, or does Anthony's return spark in Bruno his unrequited love, besides a smattering of jealousy?

Norminton gradually develops the plot, and his treatment of Bruno as both stalker and victim is careful. The novel builds up to a promising climax, much appreciated under the circumstances, and very definite in its resolution of Bruno's so-far muddled morality.

Cooking up a tasty tale

British-Bangladeshi writer Monica Ali achieved international fame with the 2003 publication of "Brick Lane," her Booker-shortlisted novel about the lives of immigrant Bangladeshis in London's East End.

She followed it up with "Alentejo Blue" in 2006, a much quieter book than her first, set among a multi-ethnic community in a Polish small town. A significant departure from her first, widely appreciated book, "Alentejo Blue" received at best lukewarm reviews.

Now Ali returns to original form with "In the Kitchen," her meditation on the goings-on at the fictional Imperial Hotel in London's Piccadilly. Her pet themes - migration, multiculturalism, racism, settling in - are in full display, and the prose crackles with verve and vivacity.

The story revolves around Gabriel "Gabe" Lightfoot, the executive chef at the Imperial, who oversees operations at a place run by the U.N. of cooks: nearly every nationality is represented in his kitchen, legally or otherwise. When at the book's beginning, the body of a porter, Yuri, is discovered in the basement, the investigating officer's first instruction to the staff is clear: "I'm not interested in your papers. I'm not here for that."

Ali is a "straddler" in the clearest sense of the term. Born in Dhaka, she grew up in Bolton, a north English textile town, and finally attended Oxford University. She therefore has firsthand knowledge of the devastation wrought on textile towns across England and how immigration only deepens already existing social fissures.

Her character, Gabe, too, is a straddler. Working in the metropolitan heart of London, he is nevertheless aware of the racism that runs like dark blood through Blantwistle, his hometown in north England.

When he learns from his sister that his father is dying of cancer, Gabe travels north to visit. In touching sequences, Ali builds upon the changed landscape of Gabe's boyhood against his real worries at work in London.

Gabe's romantic life is as complicated. While he has a healthy relationship with Charlie, a nightclub singer, he begins an obsessive affair with Lena, one of his employees, after he discovers that she has nowhere to live after Yuri's death. Originally from Belarus, Lena had become tangled in a prostitution ring and had sought refuge with Yuri to escape her assailants.

Ali writes with wit and sympathy about the many twists and turns that define our lives. Gabe's increasing sympathy for his employees after he hears Lena's story allows Ali to chart harrowing accounts of what less privileged people in other parts of the world undergo before they have a chance at migrating to a developed country and improving their lot. As a follow-up to "Brick Lane", "In the Kitchen" is a far more mature work.

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This review appeared in Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

The vanishing of Mona Lisa

She has mystified and captivated generations of onlookers, yet nothing seems to diminish the enigma of Mona Lisa. What exactly does she feel, is a question artists and scientists have explored for centuries. Is she sad, reflective, happy, disgusted…what? Leonardo da Vinci’s epic creation invites any number of interpretations depending on the state of mind of the observer. Whatever you may be thinking, Mona Lisa seems to empathise. It’s not just that the contours of the painting are brilliant; it is also the mischief, the “I-know-what-you-don’t-want-me-to-know” look in the eyes that confounds.

Such is the cult surrounding her that in 2005, Dutch researchers tried dwelling into the mind, rather face, of history’s perennial treasure trove by using a software that recognises a person’s emotions by examining the face. They concluded that Mona Lisa is 83 per cent happy, 9 per cent disgusted, 6 per cent fearful, and 2 per cent angry. Well...

In Vanished Smile, RA Scotti deftly uncovers the mysterious theft of the art world’s prima donna, close to a century ago to this day. Thanks to Scotti’s meticulous research and atmospheric writing, a crime that had all the trappings of insanity, national prestige and obsession is brought to light marvellously.

The book begins in 1911, with Argentine con man Eduardo de Valfierno luring gullible American millionaires with the bucks to buy—but not the eye to discern—the original Mona Lisa. This, when all de Valfierno had were six fakes. How did this tie with the theft of the real Mona Lisa from the Louvre in France? Scotti keeps the mystery crackling for a good 200 more pages.

Later that year, on a languorous Sunday — August 20 to be precise — the Mona Lisa vanished. Her loss was not discovered upto 48 hours later, since the museum was closed on Mondays. The crime was beyond comprehension in its cheek and neatness, launching a pan-global hunt for Leonardo da Vinci’s timeless creation.

Scotti brilliantly captures the farcical aftermath of the theft, with the French government pinning the blame on the Louvre’s authorities, newspapers having a field day with the scandal, and a clueless public trying to make sense of the Byzantine ways of the art world.

With no certainty on the criminal’s identity in sight, suspicion fell on writer Guillaume Apollinaire, enfant terrible of the Belle Époque, who had published inflammatory literature demanding the Louvre be burned down. Matters came to a head when Apollinaire was betrayed by his friend, the painter Pablo Picasso, resulting in a ludicrous court trial, allowing Scotti to show them both as wretched, though innocent, victims of an extremely sophisticated fraud.

Vincenzo Peruggia it was, an Italian employee at the Louvre, who was finally discovered to be the Mona Lisa’s thief—more than two years after the lady’s disappearance. On that fateful Sunday night, Vincenzo completed his shift and hid in a room inside the museum. At some point in the early hours of Monday, he snuck out, walked up to where the Mona Lisa hung, took her down with the precision of an expert, hid her under his coat, and walked out.

When caught (he tried selling the painting to the director of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence), Vincenzo attributed his crime to his obsessive love for the painting and to the restoration of Italian pride by returning it to its roots (da Vinci was Italian).

However, the ghost of the Argentine conman hung over Vincenzo’s head, as the latter’s jingoistic lamentations were alleged to have distinctly commercial origins. It was speculated that Vincenzo stole the Mona Lisa at the insistence of de Valfierno, who only wanted the painting to disappear from the Louvre so as to convince his buyers that each of their individual Mona Lisas was an original.

De Valfierno is believed to have commissioned French art forger Yves Chaudron to make copies of the painting so he could sell them as the missing original, and leave Vincenzo stranded with the real Mona Lisa since he had no use for it anymore. Which is why, it was said, Vincenzo tried selling it and got caught in the process.

But was any of this true? Had Vincenzo and de Valfierno indeed collaborated, making the theft a blindingly well-executed crime? Nothing was ever established, Vincenzo was hailed as a hero in Italy and let off after serving a mild sentence.

All’s well that ends well. The Mona Lisa returned to her place in the Louvre—with a completely revamped security apparatus. A theft that shook the art world to its foundations had been overturned, even though its contours were still not entirely clear—and remain so to this day. RA Scotti has given us an account that captures this uncertainty with remarkable precision — an apt tribute to Leonardo da Vinci’s mysterious muse.
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This review will appear in the June 4, 2009 edition of Business Standard.

Dripping with psychological suspense

Sarah Waters made her name as the writer of erotic "lesbo-Victorian romps" that effortlessly straddle the worlds of literary and genre fiction. Set in rural Warwickshire just after the Second World War, The Little Stranger is her fifth novel, the first with a male narrator, Dr. Faraday. We meet the doctor at Hundreds Hall, a former grand structure now wasting away, and home to the Ayreses for close to two centuries. Members of the landed gentry now fallen to ruin, the Ayreses -- Mrs. Ayres and her two grown children, Caroline and Roderick -- seem steeped in a bygone, gentler age. ...Read more>>>

Also read Teasing the velvet.