Mukherjee's novel is a fantastic journey not through history, per se, but about the aspects of the personal that inform history and its varied tellings. Many of the reviews I've read of The Holder of the World that were negative seemed to be expecting a historical fiction; this is far from Mukherjee's intention here. Indeed, she is questioning the very notion of history itself in how the narrator constructs the past of her seventeenth-century ancestor, Hannah, whose very name is palindrome, implying that she can be read in the same way from any vantage point. But this is not what the narrator discovers: Mukherjee's text is a collage of other texts from the narrator's trips to archival sources to journal entries (some from texts that actually exist, some from texts that do not exist at all), from intertextual allusions to Hawthorne and Rowlandson to a juxtaposition of different ways to retrieve and assess different kinds of information and build histories from them—e.g. the narrator's archival quest versus her partner's computerized experiments in mapping memory and time.As a novel about history, this is wonderfully written, engaging, and compelling; the fractured and fragmented narrative—which sometimes jumps back and forth in time rapidly and lacks an overall cohesiveness—can be dizzying at first, but this is part of its structural integrity. The project of building one's history is never linear, and Mukherjee's project in bringing colonial America into dialogue with colonial England—and placing Hannah in the direct center of the Native Americans and native Indians as she journeys throughout her life—is a sophisticated attempt to discuss how power and narrative can be subverted. Not only are the stereotypical traits assigned to race and mapped on to gender at play here, with Hannah navigating her way through them, but these "negative" attributes are actually sources of freedom, movement, and liberation, both for this seventeenth-century woman and for the narrator who is intent on constructing this woman's history.The source material is varied and rich; the historical settings are always visceral and enhanced by archival material—whether real or not, as Mukherjee seems to want to get the reader involved in questioning whether all truths are necessary in constructing a history or histories. I really enjoyed the book, and would highly recommend it to those interested in the problematical task of writing and constructing personal and cultural histories, and how the same problems at work in these attempts to reach back through time are also at play in the time period in questioning, allowing for a concurrent analysis of power, class, race, gender, and imperialism to take place while still conducting a very personal project close to one's heart.
This book probably deserves more than two stars (in Goodreads, this means it was okay) but I just was not able to relate to the material. It is about Hannah Easton who was born as part of the American colonies in 1670, traveled to India and became a Salem Bibi, the white lover of Hindu raja.A 2012 recent addition to the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die list, I even ordered and bought this book from Book Depository just for me to have a copy. However, while reading, the many interspersing, non-chronological, non-linear settings are too much for my simple taste. A review here on Goodreads says that memories or even recalling the past, i.e., histories (this being a historical fiction) works that way. We don't recall memories in chronological order, I thought I heard that one many times before. One of the techniques many novelists use. However, the 17th century America (except when for a while, I was reminded of the setting of The Scarlet Letter) and the Beigh Masters in New England, the British East India Company (except when I got reminded of A Passage to India) did not interest me much.Granted that it has the vivid descriptions of those glorious settings being well-researched and styled with probably the discriminating readers of serious literature in mind when being written, it just struck me as when you are going back from a buffet table with your plate full of food. You were tempted to taste so many of the dishes that the taste of each is now mixed with the others that is not supposed to happen as you would not appreciate what each viand should taste alone. So, you will end up with the custard tasting like beef stew or your 4-cheese Italian pasta tasting like chicken tandoori.Or maybe Hannah Easton, the modern version of Hester Prynne, feels like Sheena Easton who first came to my consciousness via her youngish interpretation of James Bond's movie theme "For Your Eyes Only" then when she changed her style in "Telephone" long long distance love affair, oh, oh / I can't find you anywhere, oh, oh / I call you on the telephone / But you're never home I gotta get a message to you / Wanna tell you what I'm going through, oh, oh I just turned off the radio and stopped listening to her. Or maybe my brother will enjoy this book so the money I spent ordering this from Book Depository would not go to waste. Maybe. We'll see.
What do You think about The Holder Of The World (1994)?
I really loved the rich descriptive detail, both of material objects and historical events. Unfortunately, the story-within-a-story conceit focused on telling, not showing. I couldn't really get a handle on either of the main characters, the narrator Beigh, an art historian, and the object of her obsession, Hannah, called "The Salem Bibi". I kept wondering why this book was on a Fantasy/SciFi list; the eventual scifi aspect seemed contrived. Despite these shortcomings (to my mind) the writing was in many ways very vivid - I could easily picture the jewels, the Mughal paintings, the war-elephants.
—Just_ann_now
This was a tough one. It took a while before I came into the story, and even then I was constantly set on a wrong foot. I have the impression that Mukherjee aimed at an experiment with different angles. On the one hand, an exploration of the historical process: how disparate data can be composed into a story and by doing so expose the great input of the author; and demonstrate that history has a complexity and "thickness" (Isaiah Berlin) that can not be represented by computer dates, but only can be accessed through a literary story. On the other hand, Mukherjee also wanted to evoke various problems: colonial America in the 17th century, Puritanism versus "wild Indian", and more or less the same but in the context of Mogul-India in the 17th century; plus, not insignificant, gender issues around a woman with a complex background which gradually knows to find her goal. All fascinating, sure, but ultimately, I think that Mukherjee has been a bit too ambitious to cram this in a book of only 280 pages. Maybe to reread later.
—Marc
This book has several violent scenes, so don't read if you don't care for that kind of thing. But the premise is fascinating, and I love the shift from the 1990s to the late 1600s. The majority of scenes are in India and describe tribal identities that I had no idea existed. The British were there too, plundering like crazy. The author does a great job of describing chaos while holding it all together with a story of an unlikely early American heroine. She is fascinating. I wish she really existed.
—Bonnie G
