The Asiatics: A Novel @ richardeward.com

The Asiatics: A Novel
by Frederic Prokosch
from Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Customer Reviews:

• Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0

• The authentic aura of the lands east of the Mediterranean.
  The negative (one star) review is far off the mark, and is as accurate as the incorrect title, "The Asians". I read this book while I was living IN Iran in 1962, after a lengthy stay in Beirut, driving a used VW across through Syria and Turkey, and working back, a year later, through Iraq, Jordan, and Syria, always utilizing the most basic of accomodations, including the dirt floors of rodent- and gecko-infested hovels. I felt that "The Asiatics" caught the atmosphere of the Middle East and its peoples... more info

• The Asians
  A book praised by the likes of Thomas Mann and Albert Camus, it must be good, if not great, right? Wrong. The only way I can think of it, was that this was an unusual book for the literature present at that time.
  The protagonist is an unnamed American male, with an unknown past. We learn as much about him through his journey from Syria to China, and he does about the "natives," that is to say, little to none. Most of the time he refers to the natives with derogatory adjectives such as "lazy" or "ugly"... more info

• Powerful writing, powerful images
  I had to go to Asia after reading this novel about a young European's journey overland to Asia in the 1930s. It's all the more remarkable considering the author himself never travelled outside Europe and America. I haven't read the new edition with Pico Ayer's foreword but Pico's no slouch as a writer himself, should be worth reading.

• A beautiful work of the imagination
  Frederic Prokosch wrote this imaginary journey from Lebanon across Asia to Hanoi in 1931 before he ever set foot in Asia. In the novel, the narrator, a young American, travels in catch-as-catch-can manner across the exotic continent. The landscape descriptions are extraordinary. Everywhere he meets with adventure and exotic characters who lament the end of Asia as they know it (this in 1931!). The novel was a bestseller in 1934. I nominate it as the greatest forgotten novel of the 20th Century.

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