"Really?” I believe that was my cautious response when a friend urged me to read John Buchan’s memoir Pilgrim’s Way. It was, he said, “a remarkable spiritual testament,” or words to that effect.
I reread Greenmantle two years ago, just after al Qaeda destroyed the World Trade Towers. It really is an extravagant period piece. But I am surprised that the book has not made a conspicuous comeback. The story turns on a German effort to enlist and enflame a radical Islamist sect in Turkey, where things are touch and go for the Allies. Sir Walter Bullivant of the Foreign Office summons Hannay and puts him in the picture. “The ordinary man” believes that Islam is succumbing to “Krupp guns,” to modernity. “Yet—I don’t know,” Sir Walter confesses. “I do not quite believe in Islam becoming a back number.” Hannay agrees (natch): “It looks as if Islam had a bigger hand in the thing than we thought… . Islam is a fighting creed, and the mullah still stands in the pulpit with the Koran in one hand and a drawn sword in the other.” Indeed. Later in the book, another character observes,
"There’s a great stirring in Islam, something moving on the face of the waters… . Those religious revivals come in cycles, and one was due about now. And they are quite clear about the details. A seer has arisen of the blood of the Prophet, who will restore the Khalifate to its old glories and Islam to its old purity."
Greenmantle was published in 1916. Perhaps we’ve finally caught up with it.
http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/-ldquo-Realism-coloured-by-poetry-rdquo--rereading-John-Buchan-1688
I reread Greenmantle two years ago, just after al Qaeda destroyed the World Trade Towers. It really is an extravagant period piece. But I am surprised that the book has not made a conspicuous comeback. The story turns on a German effort to enlist and enflame a radical Islamist sect in Turkey, where things are touch and go for the Allies. Sir Walter Bullivant of the Foreign Office summons Hannay and puts him in the picture. “The ordinary man” believes that Islam is succumbing to “Krupp guns,” to modernity. “Yet—I don’t know,” Sir Walter confesses. “I do not quite believe in Islam becoming a back number.” Hannay agrees (natch): “It looks as if Islam had a bigger hand in the thing than we thought… . Islam is a fighting creed, and the mullah still stands in the pulpit with the Koran in one hand and a drawn sword in the other.” Indeed. Later in the book, another character observes,
"There’s a great stirring in Islam, something moving on the face of the waters… . Those religious revivals come in cycles, and one was due about now. And they are quite clear about the details. A seer has arisen of the blood of the Prophet, who will restore the Khalifate to its old glories and Islam to its old purity."
Greenmantle was published in 1916. Perhaps we’ve finally caught up with it.
http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/-ldquo-Realism-coloured-by-poetry-rdquo--rereading-John-Buchan-1688
