Book reviews in brief

Published on Saturday 14 November 2009 12:42

THE PERSIANS BY HOMA KATOUZIAN (Yale, £30)

IRAN'S has been a history full of glories, and they're all here, from Cyrus to the Safavids and beyond, but they emerge as separate episodes in this distinguished study. If the past is another country, Persia's has been a whole succession of separate states: there's little sense here of any sweeping continuity. Instability, endemic even under the most seemingly secure regimes, has reduced horizons, fostering a short-term outlook which has made its mark down into modern times. That inconsistency is the nearest thing we have to a consistent theme as Katouzian takes us through the oppression of the colonial era and all the coups, revolutions and wars of more recent times. Though awe-inspiring in its scope and its scholarly reach, this history keeps the past in its place as it considers how the country of today was really shaped.

Oxford Companion to English Literature

edited by Dinah Birch

(OUP, 35)

WHENEVER a standard reference work is revised, there's a great deal of phoney controversy. The Oxford Companion to English Literature is no exception. Radically overhauled since Margaret Drabble's day, this edition (the seventh) affords hours of harmless amusement as its various inclusions and exclusions are picked over. What glass ceiling was it that admitted ladlit but not chicklit, for example? As ever, there's gratifying grist to the mill of those who like to feel that the barbarian is at the gate, whether in the form of Bob Dylan, Terry Eagleton or JK Rowling. Of the latter's neighbours on Merchiston's Millionaire's Row of writers only Rankin makes the cut, McCall Smith, oddly, having been left off the list. In general, though, Scottish writers, present as well as past, are extremely well represented in what remains a wonderfully useful reference source. Some 7,000-odd entries give detailed, clear and lively accounts not only of the key writers, works and movements which have gone to make up English literature but the foreign influences which have helped to shape it. A classic now made contemporary, this really is a boon companion.

THE HIDDEN LIFE OF ANCIENT EGYPT

BY CLARE GIBSON

(Saraband, 20)

SUMPTUOUS reliefs and stately friezes, rich coffin-paintings, papyrus scrolls and sculptures – Egyptian artists created works of breathtaking grace and splendour. These are unmistakably expressive works, yet expressive of what, exactly? Their eloquence stands frozen into muteness; their beauty stupefies. Art and writing were less clearly distinguished in the visual culture of the Egyptians: the use of hieroglyphics made words into pictures, pictures into words. Gibson sets out here to find which words. Venturing beyond the wow-factor to the worldview, it examines 50 important works in compelling detail, unpacking them in lively, clear and persuasive terms. An abundantly illustrated book, it offers a fascinating way in to Egyptian life and culture.