Monday, November 05, 2007

La hija de Kheops

La hija de Kheops by Alberto Laiseca. Tusquets.

If I were somehow sent back two thousand years in time to, say, Classical Rome, I think I’d probably manage to get along reasonably well. Sure, language would be a problem initially. Hygiene standards weren’t what they are today. And many -isms and -phobias that are today in the process of being wiped out were at that point still alive and well. However, I think that people then and people now are fundamentally similar. I don’t think I’d come to the conclusion that everyone around me was completely nuts. Products of their time and in many ways bass-ackward, probably. But not crazy.

But the thought of being sent a few thousand years before that, to Ancient Egypt, really makes me wonder. If La hija de Kheops is anything to go by, people then were weird. Superstitious, incestuous, and downright strange.

Full of grossness (read: incest, and try not to think too much about it), odd anachronisms, and some amusing wordplay. Possibly quite inaccurate. Generally entertaining.

(It looks like this book was never translated into English.)

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