The Stone Woman: A Novel

by Tariq Ali

Overview

Each year, when the weather in Istanbul becomes unbearable, the family of Iskender Pasha, a retired Ottoman notable, retires to its summer palace overlooking the Sea of Marmara. It is 1899 and the last great Islamic empire is in serious trouble. A former tutor poses a question which the family has been refusing to confront for almost a century: ‘Your Ottoman Empire is like a drunken prostitute, neither knowing nor caring who will take her next. Do I exaggerate, Memed?’ The history of Iskender Pasha’s family mirrors the growing degeneration of the Empire they have served for the last five hundred years. This passionate story of masters and servants, school-teachers and painters, is marked by jealousies, vendettas and, with the decay of the Empire, a new generation which is deeply hostile to the half-truths and myths of the ‘golden days.’

The Stone Woman is the third novel of Tariq Ali’s ‘Islam Quartet’. Like its predecessors—Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree and The Book of Saladin—its power lies both in the story-telling and the challenge it poses to stereotyped images of life under Islam.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781781680049
Publisher:	Verso Books
Publication date:	07/07/2015
Series:	The Islam Quintet
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	757,415
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.70(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Tariq Ali is a writer and filmmaker. He has written more than a dozen books on world history and politics—including Pirates of the Caribbean, Bush in Babylon, The Clash of Fundamentalisms and The Obama Syndrome—as well as five novels in his Islam Quintet series and scripts for the stage and screen. He is an editor of the New Left Review and lives in London.

Table of Contents

1 The summer of 1899; Nilofer returns home after an enforced
absence; Yusuf Pasha's exile; Iskander Pasha suffers a stroke	1
2 The family begins to assemble; the Baron makes an
impressive entrance; Salman's melancholy	14
3 The Baron reads an extract from the Qabus Nama on "Romantic
Passion"; the unfinished story of Enver the Albanian; Sabiha
and the Circassian maid who thought the only way of escape
was to fly	25
4 The Circassian tells her truth to the Stone Woman and
bemoans her fate; how the rich cancel the love of the poor	35
5 Petrossian tells of the glory days of the Ottoman Empire;
Salman insists that the borders between fiction and history
have become blurred; Nilofer writes a farewell letter to her
Greek husband; Orhan's belated circumcision at the hands
of young Selim	41
6 Iskander Pasha asks his visitors to explain the decline of
the Empire; the Baron points to a flaw in the Circle of Equity;
Salman's deep-rooted cynicism	52
7 Nilofer tells the Stone Woman that Selim has stroked her
breasts in the moonlight and she is falling in love with him;
she is shocked to discover that her mother has been
eavesdropping	61
8 The day of the family photograph; Iskander Pasha insists
on being photographed alone next to an empty chair;
the story of Ahmet Pasha and how he pretended to be the Sultan	84
9 Nilofer and Selim learn to know each other and she
realises that her emotions are out of control	102
10 A Greek tragedy in Konya; Emineh arrives at the house;
Nilofer is enchanted by Iskander Pasha	108
11 Sara recounts her dream to the Stone Woman, igniting
other memories and a few bitternesses	120
12 Memed and the Baron have an argument on Islamic history in
which Memed is worsted; Iskander Pasha recovers his power of
speech, but prefers to thank Auguste Comte rather than Allah	125
13 Salman meditates on love and talks of the tragedy that
blemished his life; his cruel betrayal by Mariam, the daughter
of the Copt diamond merchant Hamid Bey in Alexandria	139
14 Nilofer is overcome by longing for Selim and decides to marry
him; the Baron refuses to discuss Stendhal on love	160
15 Nilofer sends Selim to clear his head by talking to the
Stone Woman; he is surprised by the experience	174
16 The Committee for Union and Progress meets to discuss a
conspiracy to overthrow the Sultan; the Baron unveils a spy;
Nilofer would rather be an Ottoman than a Turk	178
17 A mysterious Frenchwoman of uncertain disposition arrives
unexpectedly and demands to see Iskander Pasha, who later reveals
how he used to spy on a married woman in the baths in Istanbul	195
18 The death of Hasan Baba, who is given a Sufi burial; the
return of Kemal Pasha; Sara's anger	205
19 The fragments of Kemal Pasha's life and his ambition to create
the world's largest steamship company; Nilofer reflects on
happiness and the meaning of life; the death of Mariam	213
20 The confessions of Petrossian; the murder of Great-great-uncle
Murat Pasha; the agony of Petrossian's family	226
21 Selim is so impressed by the Paris journals of Iskander Pasha
that he reads them twice; the Baron explains why the Parisian
crowd was different from Istanbul; the troubled life of
General Halil Pasha	232
22 What Catherine told the Stone Woman ten years ago	245
23 A messenger arrives from New York with a letter for Sara;
Memed plots to marry Jo the Ugly to one of Kemal Pasha's
daughters	251
24 The century prepares to enter its grave; Selim and Halil
discuss the future; Dante and Verlaine; Orhan asks a question
of Iskander Pasha	261
25 The full moon sets and the new sun rises	270
Appendix	273

Editorial Reviews

... an Eastern Magic Mountain.”—London Review of Books

“A richly woven tapestry that, even before its completion, merits comparison with Naguib Mahfouz's celebrated Cairo Trilogy. A great work in progress.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Ali spins a web of tales that is as inventive and fantastical as the Arabian nights.”—The Times

“Tales of anguish, longing, lust and love all find their way to The Stone Woman. Ali paints a vivid picture of a fading world.”—New York Times Book Review

“This Chekhov-like scenario of intense emotion within a creaking social structure constructs a rich picture of history and the way we think about history.”—Times Literary Supplement

From the Publisher

Ali paints a vivid picture of a fading world.
— New York Times Book Review

Peter Khoury

Tales of anguish, longing, lust and love...Ali paints a vivid picture of a fading world.

New York Times Book Review

Ali spins a web of tales that is as inventive and fantastical as the Arabian nights.

Times [London]

The Ottoman Empire, known as the "sick man of Europe" in the 19th century, continues its slow, steady decline in the summer of 1899 as elderly Iskander Pasha (a descendant of a sultan's favorite courtier) and his well-born family gather at their seaside palace outside Istanbul. Ali, a well-known leftist activist in Britain, explores the complexities of the Ottoman mentality in his fifth outing, a colorful, sensual drama of families, sexual intrigue and rebellion. As the novel begins, Iskander suffers a stroke and loses his power of speech. Various members of the family tell their stories, interwoven with chapters transcribing confessions made to the "stone woman," a rock formation on the estate. Iskander has four children: Salman, the eldest son; Halil, a general in the army; Nilofer, the daughter whose dramatic life is most fully explored; and her married stepsister, Zeynep. Memed, Iskander's elder brother, and his lover, the Baron, also join the family. The plot coheres neatly as the stories interconnect: Nilofer married a Greek schoolteacher for whom her love cooled, leaving her miserable; when her husband is murdered, a victim of anti-Greek violence, she pursues a love affair with a barber's son. Salman is also unhappily married, to a woman in Egypt who turns against him with an almost psychopathic violence. Halil conspires with other generals in the army to overthrow the Ottoman government. The Baron, a trained Hegelian scholar, holds forth, pedantically, on the roots of Ottoman decay. Ali's epic combines the luxuriant pacing of the old-fashioned novel of ideas with the 20th-century relish for sexual detail to conjure up an almost Chekhovian milieu. (Sept.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Born in Pakistan, political activist and Marxist author Ali began writing fiction in 1987. This, his fourth novel and the third in the "Islamic Quartet," which includes Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree and The Book of Saladin, takes place in Turkey during the last days of the Ottoman Empire. Through a series of stories, we view the checkered past and tenuous future of an ancient Turkish family as well as the impending demise of the once powerful empire. Though Ali is more successful in providing a painless history lesson to a wide range of readers than in creating a fully developed novel, he does expose readers to the history of the Ottoman Empire and entices them to explore its past further. Recommended for public and academic fiction collections.--Rebecca Stuhr, Grinnell Coll. Libs., IA Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Tariq Ali's rich and complex historical novel is set against the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. An ancient stone sculpted shaped in the form of a woman overlooks the palace where generations of Pasha family members and servants have abided for generations. The Stone Woman is an engaging, literate, accurately detailed, highly recommended novel of personalities and events as the family becomes scattered across Europe, in a time of political unrest and the clash of major power politics under the likes of Bismarck, Disraeli, and the Russian Tsar. Also highly recommended reading are the Tariq Ali's first two novels in his planned "Islamic Quartet", Shadows Of The Pomegranate (0860916766) and The Book Of Saladin(1859848346).
—Internet Book Watch

Internet Book Watch