Sometimes they’re too neat, and sometimes they’re backed by unsubstantiated, if not entirely unfounded claims. Even in Britain, where he claims that we have repressed the religious impulse like the Victorians repressed sexuality, “the result is not that the need disappears, but rather that it returns in bizarre and perverse forms”, such as liberal [...]
Sometimes they’re too neat, and sometimes they’re backed by unsubstantiated, if not entirely unfounded claims. Even in Britain, where he claims that we have repressed the religious impulse like the Victorians repressed sexuality, “the result is not that the need disappears, but rather that it returns in bizarre and perverse forms”, such as liberal humanism, or the “fantasy of salvation” through politics or science. Here he heretically denounces these secular faiths; he thinks they’re more harmful than their religious counterparts.All we’ve done with our scientific advances is repeat the mistakes of the past more effectively. Once in power, he is exactly as deranged, pathologically sexual and whimsically murderous as we thought, but Lucius allows that it was more a result of his nurture than his nature. “The horrid possibility presents itself: that he displayed his sanity by taking Rome as the hell it is.”Heresies by John Gray (GRANTA £8.99) We do not live in a secular age and John Gray doubts we ever will. Rambling but oddly pedantic narrator that he is, this takes up about half the length of Lucius’s book, after which we are reintroduced to Caligula, by now a wild and damaged young man. Then Lucius begins his account of the complex chain of events by which Caligula becomes heir, including the suspicion and machinations that led to the murder of most of his immediate family.
It’s a gossipy account, a long list of who whispered what to whom and why it got them killed, which effectively gives us the illusion of being close to events, but sadly fails to animate them for us.We are briefly introduced to Gaius as a lovable boy, away from Rome on a campaign with his father nicknamed Caligula by the soldiers, which translates as something like Bootikins. An illiterate man, forced to find a new language (classical Arabic) with which to formulate and spread the Word, who eventually established Islam and a new united Arabia in the process.Caligula by Allan Massie (SCEPTRE £7.99) In the popular imagination Caligula was a crazed and lascivious despot who was always having orgies. But then, perhaps we’ve been influenced by the big-budget 1970s soft-porn version of his life. Allan Massie’s novel is adult in the other way, soberly narrated by Lucius, a cynical and politically astute nobleman and friend of the imperial family.
A man who’d on occasion appeared in some way illuminated or marked out, but was entirely unprepared for the night of the 17th day of Ramadan in 610AD, when he awoke in a cave on Mount Hira gripped by a terrifying embrace and commanded for the first time to recite the word of God. In this way he contextualises the astonishing achievements of a man, born in Mecca in 570AD but orphaned early and raised in a Bedouin caravan, who grew into a thoughtful, well-liked and successful merchant and family man. The Prophet Muhammad: A biography by Barnaby Rogerson (ABACUS £7.99)
For Barnaby Rogerson, the life of the Prophet Muhammad is “the Shakespeare, the Aeschylus, the Euripides, the Milton, the Pinter, the complete works of mankind combined in one coherent tale”. So it’s a shame, in both senses of the word, that it isn’t better known by non-Muslims in the West. At not much more than 200 pages, this book allows the secular access to what turns out to be an enlightening and inspirational story.Rogerson diligently outlines the various religious, economic and socio-political protocols of 6th and 7th century Arabia, and skilfully evokes day to day existence within its harsh, majestic environs. The past haunts the present, and Davies’s characters move through the world like their own ghosts. It is perhaps the most affecting element of this unshowy, excellent novel..
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