REBECCA ROBERTS, Host:
There's a new novel in stores that spotlights Westerners descending upon the Middle East. In author Barry Unsworth's story, their motives are sometimes less than honorable. The year is 1914, World War I is on the horizon, and the Ottoman Empire is about to fall. These characters are competing for one small plot of land south of Baghdad. They're prospectors of varying stripes. They're seeking oil, new railroad routes, artifacts of ancient Assyria, and the Garden of Eden.
Barry Unsworth is a Booker Award-winning Brit. "The Land of Marvels" is his 16th book. And what attracted him to this patch of desert was the Baghdad Railway.
BARRY UNSWORTH: (Author, "The Land of Marvels"): This was a line, which was going into the future. I mean, the line to Baghdad and then - and the extension to Basra was a line towards the disasters that we're familiar with now.
ROBERTS: So you've set out with this time period with full understanding of the implications for modern-day issues.
Mr. UNSWORTH: Yes, it was in my mind. The Land of the Two Rivers was - as it was called then, the land between the Tigris and the Euphrates. You know, this is - mainly, this is now modern Iraq. New empires were being forged as the Ottoman Empire was in its declining phase. My novel is mainly, I suppose, about empire, about imperial ambition, the urge to dominate, power and the misuse of power, which is a theme I've always been interested in, anyway.
ROBERTS: The Baghdad Railway is bearing down on this archaeological site, which is where most of the action in the novel takes place.
Mr. UNSWORTH: Yes.
ROBERTS: The head archaeologist is named John Summerville.
Mr. UNSWORTH: Summerville, yes.
ROBERTS: He's there with his wife, Edith. At one point in the story, an American character named Elliott comes into it. Elliott is posing as an archaeologist, but he's actually looking for oil. Given America's oil interest in the Middle East today, was making him American intentional?
Mr. UNSWORTH: Yes. I think he combines two American qualities rather well: a kind of totally sincere faith in the commercial future, together with a totally sincere desire to profit from it, even to the extent of telling lies and so on and so forth. So that he's, perhaps not just American, either, but he's a mixture of truth and falsehood, inextricably combined together.
ROBERTS: And it so starkly contrasts with John Summerville, who is so earnest, so eager to really add to the world's knowledge about ancient Assyria. Reading the book, it also feels like you fell in love with stories about the Assyrian Empire a little bit.
Mr. UNSWORTH: The Assyrian Empire was the greatest - in its day, it was the greatest the world had ever seen. It had a military machine unprecedented, and it collapsed within a generation. And that seemed to me, in a way, to sum up the nature of power - that it goes up in flames or just leaks away. It's always the same story.
ROBERTS: The book is called "Land of Marvels."
Mr. UNSWORTH: Yes.
ROBERTS: Of the many marvels these characters find in this land, which ones did you find most marvelous?
Mr. UNSWORTH: (Laughing) Well, I think probably turning up artifacts that might mean totally new evaluation of the history of the Middle East. That is really marvelous. I mean, I think it - you know, it's a treasure trove, isn't it? It's finding marvelous things below the earth. It's a kind of childlike dream as well as an adult one.
ROBERTS: What sort of connections do you hope readers of this novel make to today's political, geopolitical situation?
Mr. UNSWORTH: Well, that's hard to say. I really want to ask questions, and that's what novels usually do. They ask questions rather than provide answers. But the language that was used in those days to justify imperial ambition, to justify this aggrandizement, those in power always find language, they always find the right language. I wanted, I think, the modern reader to ask himself or herself, what use is being made of language now in our time? How is language being manipulated to justify political ends that are not in themselves very praiseworthy or respectable? And I think if the reader starts to ask that kind of question, that would make me pleased, and I would feel the book had fulfilled its purpose. ..TEXT: ROBERTS: Author Barry Unsworth's new novel is called "Land of Marvels." Head to npr.org and read an excerpt.