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The Collector of Worlds: A Novel of Sir Richard Francis Burton, by Iliya Troyanov
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“Iliya Troyanov has turned Burton’s unbelievable life into believable fiction, achieving a rounded and satisfying portrait that traditional biography could never match.”
—New York Times Book Review
The Collector of Worlds is a fictionalized account of the infamous life and times of Sir Richard Francis Burton—the British colonial officer stationed in India who made the Haj to Mecca, discovered the source of the Nile, spoke twenty-nine languages, and translated A Thousand and One Arabian Nights and the Kama Sutra into English. The winner of the fiction prize of Germany’s Leipzig Book Fair in 2006 and the Berlin Literary Award, The Collector of Worlds is a brilliant re-imagining of a richly eventful, truly incredible life.
- Sales Rank: #1590532 in Books
- Published on: 2010-01-19
- Released on: 2010-01-19
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.00" h x 1.05" w x 5.31" l, .75 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 464 pages
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Troyanov recounts with gusto the three big adventures in Sir Richard Francis Burton's oversized life: his career as officer and spy—which ended when he delivered a report on British soldiers frequenting a male brothel; his famous journey to Mecca in the guise of a doctor from India; and his exploration, with John Speke, of the great African lakes that feed the Nile. The most alluring adventure is the Indian one, which largely concerns itself with Burton's affair with the luscious Kundalini, who ignites Burton's interest in Eastern wisdom stories by commingling storytelling with sex. Burton's haj to Mecca is fascinating for the details, and that Burton pulls it off. But the book's most satisfying adventure is the African explorations; Troyanov captures the psychology of the two very different (and by the end of the trip, mutually hostile) explorers as well as he does the histories of the African peoples whose lands they pass through. Troyanov (Mumbai to Mecca) is intimately acquainted with the Indian Ocean world, and this book has the cool virtuosity of one explorer saluting another. (Apr.)
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From Booklist
The current boom in the fictional biography genre is responsible for the rescue of an array of fascinating historical figures from scholarly obscurity. Colonial officer, linguist, master of disguise, spy, and explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton is a primary example. His larger-than-life true story serves as an ideal vehicle for an episodic foray into the nineteenth-century world of British colonialism. Boomeranging from India to Arabia to Africa, Burton encounters romance, intrigue, and danger while absorbing the cultures, languages, and customs of every place he visits. Troyanov artfully employs multiple narrators, lending these adventures both depth and perspective. Historical-fiction aficionados will definitely want to accompany this seasoned voyager on his exotic journeys. --Margaret Flanagan
Review
“There are novels so finely constructed that they propel you back to the beginning at the moment you reach the end. Instead of closing the covers, you return to the first page with fresh eyes. Iliya Troyanov’s ‘The Collector of Worlds’ is a wonderfully sumptuous example.” (Boston Globe)
“I was thrilled by this book. One could compare it to Moby-Dick, narrated in a masterly manner. . . . This is a novel that entertains as well as informs, and this is the best that one could say of any book.” (Günter Grass)
“Mesmerizing...the perfect present for wannabe explorers.” (National Geographic Traveler Online)
“A rounded and satisfying portrait that traditional biography could never match…Troyanov’s novel is itself an act of brave exploration, setting out to chart the unknown and unknowable by filling in the blank spaces of Richard Francis Burton.” (New York Times Book Review)
Most helpful customer reviews
25 of 26 people found the following review helpful.
Decent, but not equal to Burton
By Ben Farkash
Troyanov's novel is an entertaining read. The incredible scope of Burton's life makes that almost a given. I do not recommend this novel to anybody who has read Burton's own accounts of his journeys in life, as they are spellbinding and unbeatable coming from the source himself. If you're willing to spend the time, Edward Rice's biography of Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton is the best of many good ones. Fawn Brodie's The Devil Drives is also good, if too dependent on psychoanalysis. But for a survey of Burton's remarkable life, The Collector of Worlds is both informative and good fun.
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful.
Scenes from a remarkable life
By Ralph Blumenau
This novel is about three episodes in the life of that fascinating 19th century character, Sir Richard Burton (1821 to 1890), soldier, amateur anthropologist and explorer.
The first, which takes up about half the book, covers his life as a soldier in India (1842 to 1859). Thoroughly bored by the routine and by the narrow vision of his fellow officers, he first began learning several of India's native languages, and then took pride in his ability to disguise himself as an Indian so as to be able to mingle with them and get closer to understanding their way of life. Initially, when he was stationed in Baroda, he studied the Hindus; but when he was moved to Muslim Sindh, he became particularly fascinated by Islam. The conqueror of Sindh, General Napier, got Burton to use his skills to gather intelligence for him; but Burton thought the General's wish to impose British values on the natives wrong and counter-productive. This made him unreliable in the opinion of the army and would block any promotion. He left India and the Army.
The second part covers his pilgrimage to Mecca in 1853, disguised as Sheikh Abdullah and having made himself so perfectly familiar with the theory and practice of Islam that nobody penetrated his disguise; and the Muslim world was duly shocked when on his return he published an account of this experience. This part of the story gives a vivid account of such a pilgrimage - the dangers of attacks by plunderers, the fulfilment when the goal has been finally reached, but also the sickness and death that was the fate of so many exhausted pilgrims.
The third part covers Burton's expedition of 1857, together with his colleague and rival, John Hanning Speke, to find the source of the Nile. Again the many ordeals of the expedition are well described: the terrible terrain, frightful diseases, tribute to be paid to the chief of every village through which they passed, encounters with brutal Arab slavers.
The narrative alternates, in part 1 with comments of his Hindu servant; in part 2, rather tediously, with the attempts of Ottoman officials to find out, after Burton had published his account of his journey to Mecca, what his purpose might have been: they suspect it was gathering information for Britain's imperialist purposes; and in part 3, with an African guide who recounts to his friends his memories of the expedition, and who is the most interesting of the three. This device enables Troyanov to show Burton as he might have been seen by others, but I found it somewhat distracting, especially as you have to read some of the dialogue between several characters more than once to make sure who is speaking.
Altogether, I was a little disappointed by this book. Burton's personality did not come out as vividly as I think it might have done; the prose is sometimes striking, but at others it goes, I think, a little over the top (the book has been translated from the German by William Hobson); and the three episodes represent only a fraction (though a large one) of Burton's life. After a decent interval, I may return to him again, this time through a proper biography like Fawn Brodie's The Devil Drives.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
A rousing story of 19th century exploration
By Lynn Harnett
Fueled by an insatiable thirst for knowledge, adventure, and exploration, Richard Burton (1821 - 1870) cut a deep, wide swath across the Victorian British Empire, leaving reams of his own writings in his wake.
He spoke somewhere in the neighborhood of 29 languages. He traveled throughout India and the Middle East and sought the source of the Nile in Africa, nearly losing his life on numerous occasions. Renowned for his interest in local sexual proclivities, he translated the Kama Sutra and measured the sexual organs of men through whose lands he passed.
Given all this, and lots more, you would expect there to be cascades of colorful, swashbuckling fiction based on this outsize character. But there's hardly a trickle. There are lots of biographies fomenting lots of controversy, but little fiction and what there is seldom centers on Burton himself.
Bulgarian writer Troyanov, who grew up in Germany and Africa, and has traveled in many of the same places Burton did, sets out to remedy that lack. His big, vivid, thoughtful novel focuses on three periods in Burton's life: his early years as a young soldier in India; his famous pilgrimage to Mecca as an Indian Muslim on the sacred Hajj; and his first search for the Nile's source with partner John Speke.
The first and longest section introduces a young, eager, ignorant British officer to vibrant, teeming, mystical, squalid India. Burton spurns the cloistered existence of his fellow officers to immerse himself in the country. He explores the city's hidden byways and engages a teacher to learn the language and culture. But it's not enough.
"As long as he was a foreigner, he would learn almost nothing. There was only one solution; it appealed to him immediately. He would cast off his foreignness instead of waiting for it to be taken from him. He would act as if he were one of them."
Burton's third-person viewpoint alternates with his former head servant's narrative. Naukaram, as hidebound a Hindu as Burton's fellow officers are Victorian Imperialists, organized Burton's household, brought him a beguiling, eye-opening lover, and even followed him to England, only to be cast out without a proper reference after eight years' service.
"That is the trouble with these people," Burton fumes, sending Naukaram away. "They were incapable of assuming any personal responsibility." Burton may have soaked up India like a sponge, but he remains a Brit to the core.
This first section, with its two voices, its witty prose and rich atmosphere, transports you to the blowing sand, baking heat and vast ambition of India and young Burton. The second section sets you squarely back in your chair.
In this section the Muslim Turkish Caliphate investigates Burton's account of the Hajj he completed two years earlier, officials questioning witnesses and companions Burton mentioned in his book. Between these reports the narrative
slips back into the imagining of Burton's private moments - as a doctor examining a woman, under fire by bandits, in the midst of mob madness during a ritual stoning of the devil. Despite these disjointed periods of relief the interrogations grow tedious as well as paranoid and unreliable.
The final section returns to the shape of the first, with the strong, lively voice of a storyteller - a freed slave who accompanied the expedition as a guide - in counterpoint to the author's view of Burton's inner musings. Again the prose is rich with the atmosphere of the strange and exotic.
"He stands in the river, murky water up to his hips, and every time he puts his arm beneath the surface, he touches something slimy. It's not unpleasant, as a matter of fact, just unfamiliar. There's mud wherever they put their feet, a darkness they have to wade through, the queasiness rising in their throats, as it sucks at their legs. He stands in the water and wonders if they made a mistake when they were standing by what was at the time a broad, gently flowing river, debating where they should cross. Perhaps it would have been better back there: the water was deeper it's true, but at least they could see the other bank."
The trip is beset by such uncertainties and by unpredictable tribes, illness, accident, desertion and more. Speke and Burton, very different personalities, are barely civil by the end of the trip and neither trusts the other.
Troyanov's novel leaves Burton (jumping ahead to his deathbed, which frames the novel) an enigma, unknowable even - maybe especially - to himself, and no less fascinating for that. While examining this complex, adventurous man of his times, Troyanov touches on the issues of Empire, particularly the legacy of slavery and dominance, the shapes of the land and the gulf between cultures.
Troyanov's prose is as cerebral as it is visual. He brings the man to life yet leaves him a mystery and leaves the reader with a sense of wonder and enlightenment. This is a fine, stimulating, well-organized and beautifully written book, but the quintessential swashbuckling Burton novel still remains to be written.
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