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Literary Review
ADVENTURE
Outrageous fiction
AJIT DUARA
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Like all his novels, Wilbur Smith’s latest too is only for hardcore fans.
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The Quest; Wilbur Smith, Macmillan, £18.99.
The Quest is the fourth novel in Wilbur Smith’s Egyptian series. Once again the story is about Taita, long liver and Warlock in the Kingdom of Pharoah Nefer Seti. “Long liver” in Smith’s mythological world is one
who has the power to live several human generations. As it happens, Taita also has the supernatural gift of the ‘third eye’ and can sense the aura of people he meets; he can shrewdly assess the vibrations they emit and can tell whether they are evil or good. But he has secret sorrows too. He has been disfigured and turned into a eunuch as a young man. He can never reveal himself to women and he can never have an heir.
As the right hand man of several generations of Egyptian monarchs, Taita’s sway over the twin kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt is unparalleled. As any basic introduction to Egyptian civilisation will explain, the kingdoms of the Nile are dependent on the ‘flood’ or the ‘inundation’ of the sacred river. Every year when the Nile floods it brings the silt and the rich agricultural soil to both banks.
Acquired taste
But, as the novel begins, Taita’s beloved Egypt is about to be destroyed. The Nile has dried up and Pharoah Nefer Seti has no alternative but to send his trusted lieutenant to the source of the Nile at the end of the civilised world. He has to find out what stopped the life-giving Nile from flowing?
The Quest, like all Smith’s novels, is an acquired taste. The violence is graphic and he takes great pains to describe the tearing of limbs, the beheading of enemy soldiers, the crude surgery to save the wounded. The supernatural
also has to be accepted as a given and we discover that the real cause of the Nile drying up is not a drought or a manmade dam or even sabotage. It is an evil witch who wants to destroy Nefer Seti and take the title of Pharoah herself!
However, amid the blood and gore and sheer tedium of battle upon battle, there is one fascinating episode when Taita finally enters the lair of the great witch, Eos. Apparently, this ethereal lady from the devil has set up her own stem cell research plant, or at least an ancient version of it. Taita’s brave soldier, Meren, has lost an eye in battle and in Eos’s laboratory, the ‘Cloud Gardens’, her doctors are able to plant a seed in the open wound, which slowly grows into a new eye with 20/20 vision. Taita is mesmerised by this advanced medical science and the clever Eos leads him to an offer he cannot refuse. She says she can do the same thing vis-À-vis his eunuch status.
The real purpose of course is to mate with Taita so that she can then control him and through him the Nile, the Upper and Lower Kingdoms and the Pharoah himself. Heavens! In the name of Anubis! Oh Isis! Osris forbid! The great Seth protect us! Beloved Horus! Amon-Re, God of the Pharoahs!
By taking the names of Egyptian Gods and Goddesses so liberally and then turning them into instruments in his outrageous fiction, one wonders about Wilbur Smith’s perspective on ancient Egypt. Does he respect antiquity or does he just see it as convenient resource for his bloody books?
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