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A review by yanailedit
Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree by Tariq Ali
4.0
This book lulls you into a false sense of security and then rips your heart up.
Ali has a gift for storytelling and toys with his readers until we’re just as drunk on the comfort, love, respect, and drama of Al Hudayl as the Banu Hudayl themselves. The tales of chivlary within the narrative hypnotize us while the painstaking characterisation of each individual feeds into our hopes. Ali knows we are conditioned to expect a happy ending when something is so clearly deserving, even if historical fact details otherwise.
Instead of sweetening the narrative to spare our sensibilities, Shadows does a fantastic job of delivering a masterful end to hope without becoming perversely obsessed with gore. This is especially true of the tiny epilogue:.
I’m particularly impressed by Ali’s specific strain of deep-running humor, dark as can be: an incredible number of biblical references are weaved through the narrative, making its bitterness an elegantly construed depiction reminescent of Mudejar geometric art. I’m gutted but in the most exquisite of manners...
In spite of the tragic nature of Ali’s work, it’s humbling and a dang education to follow a narrative not created to cater to cultural Christianity and all of its established taboos and tropes. And what better way to critically examine our own cultural narratives than to look into how we’ve framed the “re”conquest of Spain and colonialism. Always colonialism.
Ali has a gift for storytelling and toys with his readers until we’re just as drunk on the comfort, love, respect, and drama of Al Hudayl as the Banu Hudayl themselves. The tales of chivlary within the narrative hypnotize us while the painstaking characterisation of each individual feeds into our hopes. Ali knows we are conditioned to expect a happy ending when something is so clearly deserving, even if historical fact details otherwise.
Instead of sweetening the narrative to spare our sensibilities, Shadows does a fantastic job of delivering a masterful end to hope without becoming perversely obsessed with gore. This is especially true of the tiny epilogue:
Spoiler
after detailing the genocide and cultural purging committed on the Peninsula, he briefly brings our gaze to the stunning beauty of Tenochtitlan by which point we have already learned our lesson about what happens to beautiful thingsI’m particularly impressed by Ali’s specific strain of deep-running humor, dark as can be: an incredible number of biblical references are weaved through the narrative, making its bitterness an elegantly construed depiction reminescent of Mudejar geometric art. I’m gutted but in the most exquisite of manners...
In spite of the tragic nature of Ali’s work, it’s humbling and a dang education to follow a narrative not created to cater to cultural Christianity and all of its established taboos and tropes. And what better way to critically examine our own cultural narratives than to look into how we’ve framed the “re”conquest of Spain and colonialism. Always colonialism.