A Question of Precedence

<p>Pickthall is a wonderful storyteller. He brings us straight into the narrative with sharply drawn personalities dealing with dilemmas to which we can relate. He builds a picture of the physical environment - buildings flowers the landscape - that is convincing. His central characters may be rogues and cheats religious fanatics bandits or hypocrites but they are all drawn as the result of acute observation. We see the world from the perspective of an Egyptian soldier a Syrian peasant an Ottoman official.</p><p>His use of language is remarkable. In his Middle East fiction novels and stories he uses an archaic English comprehensible but unfamiliar. It is as if the world he is reproducing is alien and needs to be clothed in words and phrases that take the reader right away from his or her world.</p><p>The lands in which Pickthall's stories are set have since his time undergone changes that have been violent and unprecedented. Wars revolutions displacement and emigration voluntary and forced have been the lot of Syrians Palestinians Egyptians and Turks since Pickthall's time. These people are the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the men and women among whom Pickthall travelled whom he loved and whose lives he has reconstructed for our enlight- enment and delight.</p>