Evil Eye a thrilling vision of an Ottoman hero,
book review by Steve Donoghue
Raymond Chandler, who knew a thing or two
about the fictional detective, famously wrote that he must be “the best man in
his world and a good enough man for any world.” Consciously or not, Jason
Goodwin has thoroughly absorbed that precept; his own fictional detective,
Yashim, might have considered Philip Marlowe a bit uncouth (all that smoking
and drinking surely show a lack of self-control), but they are cut from the
same cloth when it comes to righting the wrongs of the world.
In “An Evil Eye,” Goodwin’s fourth novel,
Yashim’s world is the decaying Ottoman Empire of the early 19th century. The
year is 1839, and a new sultan, Abdulmecid, has replaced the old one in
Istanbul. In the novel’s most atmospheric, least realized subplot, this change
in monarchs occasions a corresponding change in the monarch’s harem. In an echo
of Goodwin’s first book, “The Janissary Tree” (2006), the sultan’s harem also
contains a mystery that will eventually involve our detective. But in “An Evil
Eye,” the more immediate puzzle is posed by a dead body found on the island of
Chalki in the well of the monastery. The dead man in the well is marked with a
totenkopf — or skull symbol — and when Yashim is dispatched to investigate, it
doesn’t take him long to surmise that the dead man might have been Russian.
Goodwin is an author of many strengths — the
books in this series can be read independently of each other, and they just
keep getting better — and the discovery of a Russian corpse in a Christian well
in the heart of a Muslim land allows him to play to the best of those
strengths: his remarkable ability to clarify the muddle of that decaying
empire. “The Ottomans were not a nation [but] a caste, almost a family,” we
learn. “Just as the sultan, as head of the family, maintained his pashas and
his odalisques, so the Ottomans maintained their retinues in turn.” Yashim’s
effort to restore some semblance of harmony to that family is made all the more
complicated by the implication of Fevzi Ahmet Pasha, his old mentor in the
service of the former sultan.
The complicated plot that unfolds is deftly
controlled throughout, with dangers, chases, intrigues and frequent trips back
to the harem. Goodwin’s prose is sharp and surprising (about that dead Russian
we’re told, “His skin had wrinkled in the long immersion under water, soft and
ridged like the white brains of sheep laid out for sale in the butcher’s
market”), and the best part of the entertainment is none other than Yashim, a
redoubtable, philosophical hero who finds himself in a dirty, battered world
yet still holds out hope: “I think there is always a little gap somewhere,
however hard you try to fit everything together. A small space, for something
like grace, or mercy.”
There is precious little mercy in the
cutthroat world Goodwin portrays here. Yashim is caught between the merciless
cunning of his old teacher and the innocence of that teacher’s little daughter,
between the politics of the sultanate and the equally twisted politics of the
harem. The standout joy of these books is readers’ confidence that we’ve got
the right hero, that the calm Yashim will prevail. “In the end,” he tells an
exasperated colleague, “it isn’t about people, or sultans, or corruption. It’s
about the truth.”
If there were only more such men, Chandler
tells us, “the world would be a very safe place to live in.” And maybe the poor
old Ottoman Empire would have lasted a bit longer if it had had more Yashims to
call upon. As it is, we must hope the original has many, many more adventures.
Donoghue is managing editor of the online magazine Open Letters Monthly.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/book-review-evil-eye-a-thrilling-vision-of-an-ottoman-hero/2011/03/01/AFcOohGD_print.html
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