On The Edge of Christmas-A heartwarming tale-Review of The Shepherd by Frederick Forsyth

Those who have read the more well-known works of Frederick Forsyth- The Dogs of War, Day Of The Jackal, The Odessa File-may well want to fish this early gem from a bookstore or a library. I first ready this in Readers Digest, many years ago, and it would be over 20 years before I would chance upon the book itself, in an airport stall. If the 3 works I have mentioned earlier- the holy trinity of political thrillers in our adolescence- are written for commercial success, The Shepherd is written from the heart and displays an early talent for tight, entertaining writing.

Mr Forsyth narrates the tale in the first person, the protagonist being a young RAF fighter pilot flying back home in his De Havilland Mosquito from Germany to England. It is Christmas eve, and he is in a hurry to get back to his family. Over the North Sea, in a dense mass of fog, the young pilot finds everything in his cockpit malfunctioning and his fuel running low. He is unable to figure out where he is and in the absence of radio communications, cannot send a SOS out. He then remembers his old flying school instructor telling him that in such a situation he has two options- bail out(but then he may be over the sea and the aircraft is not easy to bail out of) or fly in triangles till a passing aircraft, known as the shepherd, spots him and guides him to safety. He flies in triangles and then on his last leg, he finds his shepherd. From here onwards, the story takes one turn after another, surprising us till the end.

One of the great assets of any writer, which we take for granted, is his/her choice of words and the ability to use them to create images. Mr Forsyth, one of the most dramatic of authors in our time, shows us he had this talent right from the beginning. He is sparing with his words, not quite Hemingwayesque but nonetheless frugal. In Johnny Kavanagh, the mysterious hero of the tale, he creates a hero with a compassionate but dark side, in a few sentences. Mr Kavanagh is, of course, Irish-and in the melancholic tradition handed down to us by popular culture, he heroically goes out to find crippled planes flying back home during the war. Peculiarly, he is not a drinking man. But in his determination to fly out again and again during wartime, when he does not need to, he comes across as a man who courts death without hesitation. In the end, it is the spirit of a fine war time tradition, the sheperding of lost pilots, that guides Mr Forsyth back home safely.

It is, of course, tempting to draw Biblical parallels from the story. I shall not get into that. Perhaps Mr Forsyth intends some to be drawn- or perhaps all those years ago, he wanted to write a simple tale of human warmth, compassion and love for your fellow men. He certainly conjures up well the bonhomie of flyers the world over. In an age when human worth is measured in numbers and friendships in quarters, it is worthwhile remembering these qualities. In this surprisingly brief book, the reader will find the many qualities that made a famous writer and also a tale in itself, worth a Christmas storytelling.

Vampires in our time-Book Review of The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

For those who have read Bram Stoker’s Dracula, this will be a trip down the same road, but meandering through hitherto bylanes and alcoves, often with surprising results. Elizabeth Kostova narrates a masterful yarn in the first person, starting with the time when she discovers a packet full of letters in her father’s library. The letter, written by her father’s doctoral supervisor and mentor to an unknown friend, is the first of many she comes to know and which begins a narrative reluctantly disclosed by her diplomat father. Her father, Paul, tells her how his mentor, Bartolomeo Rossi, disappears from his university campus and how he teams up with Rossi’s daughter, Helen, to find him. Paul is no wide-eyed Jonathan Harker nor is Helen a Victorian Nina. The complexities of their characters and that of the others in this novel, add layers to this take in a way that Stoker did not. Yet Kostova is never far away from the mother classic, even showing it to be a part of Dracula’s own private library. There are, in place of Dr Van Helsing, the robust and earnest Dr Turgut Bora and Master James, one from Istanbul and the other from Oxford and the ancient Anton Stoichev who comes closer to the vampire than anyone else. It is a sign of our age that Dracula is no longer slain only by good white anglo saxons but also pursued by Turkish academics, Romanians, Bulgarians and even a half-Scotch Gypsy. In bringing forth the amiable but dogged Professor Gorgescu and his brave pursuit of Dracula, Kostova dismisses the image of gypsies as handymen of the monster, as shown in the original book.

Three key aspects of this story stand out- one, the assertion that vampirism did not begin with Dracula but in a heretical practice in France; two, that Dracula was far from the dark myth we know and was a far more complicated and interesting character and three, that both East and West have common traditions of the same evil. Obviously, we have come a long way from Stoker’s sexually repressed Victorian age and the study of traditions, myths and folkores across the world has been enriched considerably over the years. Dracula proves to be on one hand a brave warrior, a man of great learning and on the other hand, a person of immense cruelty and a prodigious talent who turns to the dark side. Kostova shows us as well how the powers of his time did business with him, supped with him and in case of the Hungarians, even gave him a wife. She also shows how people of the church may not be completely above condoning evil as well- as it was monk who helped him carry out the heresy that gave him immortal life.

But above all, Kostova’s work is a study of evil-and a parable for our times. It shows how evil can be attractive, even seductive and how supping with the devil can be a literal act. Her  writings, against the background of the coming carnage in the Balkans in the 1990s, is a clear warning. It also shows how the West can create evil for it’s own purposes which then comes back to haunt it and even threaten to destroy it. The underbelly of civilisation is not often very palatable and it is this murky netherworld for which this novel provides a powerful allegory.

Written with great visual imagination and a  keen sense of atmosphere, Kostova manages to put a difficult story together brilliantly. Her writing style brings forth high drama and anticipation without being overtly dramatic. This is a must read.

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