14-02-2025
A jewel of a novel that's skillfully structured, brilliantly visualised
While arranging the books in my father's library, I came across a novel that I was gifted a long time back and totally forgot about. It was called The Shadow of God: A Novel of War and Faith by Anthony A. Goodman (2002) and was gifted to me by my brother almost twenty years ago.
At the time, I thought the book was bulky in size and lost interest in reading it. I shelved it in the hope that I'd read it one day and this day had finally arrived! I started it and it took me a month to finish as I was busy in between with the usual summer headache of kittens being dumped at my doorstep and the hard work that came along with it.
The novel is set in the Ottoman empire era and starts with the death of Sultan Selim I in 1520 and the succession of his son Sulieman I — also known as the Magnificent and the Lawgiver — who is one of the most famous Islamic sovereigns of all times. Sultan Sulieman decides to start his reign by invading the island of Rhodes, a conquest that his grandfather Mehmet II failed to achieve in 1480 and died a year later.
Rhodes had been occupied by the Knights of St. John — the last crusaders expelled from Acre in 1290 — for the past 200 years and who were a nuisance to the Ottoman commerce routes in the Aegean Sea.
The Ottomans knew that it would be a hard endeavour and went prepared with a fleet of more than 300 ships and a force of 75,000 soldiers.
At the time, there were only 700 knights on the island and their Grandmaster Philippe Villiers de L'Isle-Adam asked for backup forces from other Christian countries but only the Venetians responded to his plea. The Knights prepared for the siege by destroying fertile lands and placing a huge chain in the harbour to stop the Ottoman ships from entering.
The Ottomans began by bombarding the outer walls of the city with cannons before digging tunnels under the wall. After six months of siege, the knights surrendered and departed with their followers to Crete in January of 1523 (502 years ago exactly!).
Both sides suffered heavy losses in lives. Most of Goodman's characters are based on real people that existed and took part in the siege. The few fictional ones are added to familiarise readers with warfare atmosphere, such as the couple Jean and Melina who worked in the hospital as nurses during the siege; their diminishing hopes and growing fears are shared as they watch their city slowly fall in the hands of the Ottomans with the infamous reputation of killing and enslaving their enemies.
Goodman – who's an American MD — displays his vast knowledge vividly in hospital scenes where he describes medieval procedures used by doctors at the time to treat wounds and amputate limbs. As for real characters, he keeps alternating chapters between the two camps as the personas discuss their offense and defence plans, the short-lived glories and setbacks, the difficulties that both camps face with shortage of resources and weather change.
The reader is engrossed in every scene as Goodman demonstrates an unbiased perspective of both warring camps' motive for trying to occupy Rhodes, while the native's opinion doesn't matter at all as they switch one invader for another. An interesting fact is that the author visited Rhodes in 1982 and was fascinated by its rich history. After twenty years of research and writing, this jewel of a novel came out that's skillfully structured, brilliantly visualised. A must-read.
