Ramses: Historical Fiction by Christian Jacq

I’ve been reading the last 3 of the 5 volume series by Christian Jacq about the Egyptian pharaoh Ramses II – “The Battle of Kadesh” (Vol 3), “The Lady of Abu Simbel” (Vol 4) and “Under the Western Acacia” (Vol 5).

The big theme is Ramses’ wars, peace and diplomacy vis-à-vis those pests of the Ancient World, the Hittites, who had a chronic inability to stay put in their own lands and made a nuisance of themselves all over the Near East. At least that’s how they’re portrayed in these books; I imagine that if the Hittites wrote their own books, the perspective would be somewhat different. “The Battle of Kadesh” describes, well, the battle of Kadesh, in which the Egyptians are on the verge of getting routed by the Hittite army, but are saved at the last minute by Ramses’ pal, the god Amon, who gives Ramses his power and helps him win (remind me to cultivate friends in high places). “The Lady of Abu Simbel” focuses on a lot of palace intrigue, as well as the doings of a certain Moses, he of the Ten Commandments. The last volume, “Under the Western Acacia”, is pretty insipid and it looks like the author was getting tired of the series and couldn’t wait to finish. All in all it’s pretty good historical fiction, even though Jacq over-romanticizes Ramses’s reign. I plan to catch up on the first two of the series whenever I can get my hands on them.

Welcome

I am starting my new blog on books & satire with my all time favorite quote by PG Wodehouse in his introduction to his Blandings Castle Novel Summer Lightning:

“A certain critic--for such men, I regret to say, do exist--made the nasty remark about my last novel that it contained `all the old Wodehouse characters under different names'. He has probably by now been eaten by bears, like the children who made mock of the prophet Elisha; but if he still survives he will not be able to make a similar charge against Summer Lightning. With my superior intelligence, I have outgeneralled the man this time by putting in all the old Wodehouse characters under the same names.”

It's a pity that Wodehouse's books are not so popular in the US (where I live). Forgive them for they do not know what they're missing.