The Holder of the World

This is one of those books I recommend to people if they want a book that has EVERYthing. Romance, scientists, a historical mystery and detective chase, a prince and his mistress, culture clash, the search for freedom, and an amazing set of locales for contrast. You can't get any different from the palaces of India than 1700's Pilgrim America. I can't describe how much I love this book. The ending is phenomenal, ingenious, genre bending stuff. Totally unexpected and deservedly earns to me the bestowed crown of reviews: one of the best endings of any book I have ever read. The prose is thick, it is not a quick read, but this is a detail oriented book. It is very smartly written, and I would recommend it to any professor looking for a great multicultural studies course novel. The romance of the book is sweeping but also restrained. Mukherjee is an expert at making us patiently wait for a deserved outcome. I can't say any more without giving too much away. Holder of the World is a huge accomplishment of a novel, it is something utterly unique in the number of directions it takes and the number of places we go in it makes us realize that love, however brief, is truly the greatest treasure.

If someone told me that an author could transplant a seventeenth century female Protestant from Salem, Massachusetts, to the excesses of southern India and have the character enjoy that life, I might raise an eyebrow at its improbability. If someone told me that the vividly bloody action of King Philip's (Indian) War in Massachusetts and a Muslim-Hindu holy war near the Coromandel Coast in India were connected, I might look askance in disbelief that such atrocities on opposite sides of the world, committed for totally different reasons, could possibly be related. If that someone then told me that a narrator might locate a missing three hundred year old jewel by using a virtual reality program developed by her MIT researcher/lover, I'd be picturing a bodice-ripper with Fabio on the cover. And if that someone still had the nerve to suggest that all the above could be combined seamlessly, knowledgeably, and totally successfully in one astounding novel of fewer than 300 pages, I absolutely would not believe it. I still don't. Yet that is exactly what Bharati Mukherjee has done in The Holder of the World. In doing so, she manages to create a true literary bridge between East and West, reaching so far back to the roots of our respective cultures and thinking that for the first time in the dozen or so novels I've read by Indian authors, I feel as if I'm beginning to understand how and why we and they became who we are.

This novel was first described to me as a rewrite of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, so I was a little surprised when I read Mukherjee's book. It is not simply another version of Hawthorne's work, but rather a complex story that combines elements of history, romance, time-travel, mystery, and adventure. Though it was not exactly what I expected, I thoroughly enjoyed The Holder of the World. The large cast of characters and the intertwined plots were at times a bit confusing, but the central story of Hannah was fascinating. In addition to constructing an interesting narrative that takes place on three different continents in two different periods of history, Mukherjee skillfully leads the reader to question what we consider to be the canon of literature and the "Truth" of history. She achieves the latter in part by convincingly citing various primary sources, some of which do exist and others that don't. I found some of the most intriguing characters to be on the margins of Mukherjee's narrative-Hannah's mother Rebecca, Henry Hedges, and the Marquis de Mussy, to name a few. The Holder of the World also shows many connections between the New World of America and the Old World of India, something not traditionally thought of in conjunction with colonial North America. I especially appreciated the way Mukherjee associated Asian Indian influence with American Indian influence on the colonies and showed both to be much more important than we might assume. I highly recommend this book, but also offer one piece of advice: to enjoy this book, read it slowly and thoroughly. If you skim it, then the plot will only be confusing.

This book held me in thrall page after page. The story is truly unconventional and offers the satisfaction of conventional, topnotch plot construction added to highly unusual events.

If someone told me that an author could transplant a seventeenth century female Protestant from Salem, Massachusetts, to the excesses of southern India and have the character enjoy that life, I might raise an eyebrow at its improbability. If someone told me that the vividly bloody action of King Philip's (Indian) War in Massachusetts and a Muslim-Hindu holy war near the Coromandel Coast in India were connected, I might look askance in disbelief that such atrocities on opposite sides of the world, committed for totally different reasons, could possibly be related. If that someone then told me that a narrator might locate a missing three hundred year old jewel by using a virtual reality program developed by her MIT researcher/lover, I'd be picturing a bodice-ripper with Fabio on the cover. And if that someone still had the nerve to suggest that all the above could be combined seamlessly, knowledgeably, and totally successfully in one astounding novel of fewer than 300 pages, I absolutely would not believe it. I still don't. Yet that is exactly what Bharati Mukherjee has done in The Holder of the World. In doing so, she manages to create a true literary bridge between East and West, reaching so far back to the roots of our respective cultures and thinking that for the first time in the dozen or so novels I've read by Indian authors, I feel as if I'm beginning to understand how and why we and they became who we are