A History of the World in 101/2 Chapters

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A HISTORY OF THE WORLD IN 10½ CHAPTERS by Julian Barnes is not a history such as we read in our student days. It is not your usual run of fiction, either. A medley of myth, history and humour it is. Steeped in amazing diction and mastery over the craft of storytelling, it is a safe bet for binge reading. Salman Rushdie calls it "Brilliant, funny and thoughtful". The book was first published in 1989.

Julian Barnes (born 1946, Leicester) is a British author. He was a lexicographer before he took to writing as a profession. He has written five books of non-fiction and eleven of fiction, including THE SENSE OF ENDING (2011), which got him the Man Booker Prize for Literature. Winner of several other prestigious awards, his books have been translated into forty languages. Barnes lives in London.

Barnes seems to trust history but scarcely. Aptly then, this book comes off as a tapestry of well-crafted images from the past. He picks up elements from myth, legend, history and life in general to give them his own shape of impactful stories. These stories are funnily make-believe as well.

The opening chapter, STOWAWAY, takes the reader back to the time of the Deluge and Noah's ark. The Bible says Noah was 'the only good man of his time.' (Genesis, 6:10). That is why God entrusted to him the captaincy of the ark. But Barnes's Noah is a drunkard and a man of moods. His rescue mission is also skewed. The creatures on board are classified 'Clean' and 'Unclean'. Strong bias is manifest against the Unclean. Animals such as unicorn go extinct, even though the ark is meant to be a safe haven for the animal-pairs on board. The hidden narrator of this chapter itself poses a grave danger to the ark as a whole. It is a woodworm lurking in the wooden ship, but a woodworm with loads of attitude. The stowaway has this to tell us humans, 'I know your species tends to look down on our world, considering it is brutal, cannibalistic and deceitful (…this makes us closer to you rather than more distant).' Man, and his false airs!

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The chapter, THE VISITORS, is about a rescue mission of another kind. Time is the present. Members of an Arabian terrorist group 'Black Thunder' hijack a cruise ship, Santa Euphemia, to negotiate for release of three of their associates imprisoned in France and Germany. As in the Ark, the multinational passengers on this ship are either 'Clean' or 'Unclean' - for, or against their cause. The day ends with the intervention of the American Special Forces. The terrorists are killed, as are some of the American and British hostages - the 'Unclean Ones'. This chapter is Barnes's take on the on-going turmoil in the Middle East. It is, he says, the consequence of 'European guilt over the Holocaust being paid for by the Arabs.'

THE WAR OF RELIGIONS is once again about man-versus-woodworm. Barnes cites a 15th century incident of France when these hapless creatures were indicted by a church court for sacrilege. Their crime? They infested the legs of a bishop's throne. As the Holy Church dignitary sat on the throne, its hollowed legs gave way and the man fell down head first, losing his mind because of the injury. Yet, the pleader for the woodworms put forth an irrefutable argument in defence of his presumed clients: '…they were in the wood (which was fashioned) into the throne. Far from the woodworm infesting what Man has constructed, it is Man who has wilfully destroyed the woodworm's habitation and taken it for his own purpose,' the lawyer said, clinching the issue.

THE SURVIVOR, is about a childless housewife, young Kath Ferris. Tired of the daily bickering with her husband, Greg, who 'sometimes slapped (her) around a bit on pay night' she leaves her household one day to sail out in her boat to the sea. In her company are a feline couple, Paul and Linda. Having been lost on the open sea for several weeks, she finds herself landed on an isolated island. Here at last she has a family to run when Linda delivers five lovely kittens.

UPSTREAM! and PROJECT ARARAT are also the present-day tales. The first is about seafaring Charlie who keeps writing love-dripping letters to the mother of his offspring back home; only to find on his return that she has run away with someone else. In the second, a much-celebrated man nicknamed 'Touchdown Tiggler', on his visit to the moon, receives God's command to go to Mount Ararat and look for the remains of Noah's ark. Landing on earth, he sets forth for the exploration in the company of a hired geologist. All for the love of God. He returns from his mission only with a plastic bottle filled with water from a stream flowing down the Holy Mount.

Likewise, chapters SHIPWRECK, THE MOUNTAIN and THREE SIMPLE STORIES are bound to tickle one's funny bone. The last one - THE DREAM, is an icing on the cake. The protagonist here is a white male, pampered on the plentitude of today's Western society. Here he is in conversation with Margaret, a heavenly caregiver:

'Look, this is Heaven, isn't it?'

'Oh yes.'

…

'I don't want to sound ungrateful,' I said cautiously, 'but where's God?'

'God. Do you want God? Is that what you want?'

'Is it a question of what I want?'

….

'Heaven is democratic these days,' she said….

'What do you mean democratic?'

'We don't impose Heaven on people any more,' she said. '…And then of course they get the sort of Heaven they want.'

'And what sort do they want on the whole?'

'Well, they want a continuation of life, that's what we find. But…better, needless to say.'

'Sex, gold, shopping, dinner, meeting famous people and not feeling bad?' I asked a bit defensively.'

….

End of the story. A history of the world in 10½ chapters. The '½' of the title alludes perhaps to the 23-page PARENTHESIS, in which Barnes talks of serious things such as the past, love and truth in his half serious manner. Yet, on the missing other '½', his silence is deafening.