Christopher KremmerRezensionen

Luz Harvey

A slightly disjointed amble through central Asia, taking in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and Pakistan. A bunch of not overly connected travel pieces makes "The Carpet Wars" sometimes confuses the reader as to when events happened and the sometimes oblique connections to carpets can make digesting the book hard work. Kremmer makes up for this though with some evocative writing of the areas of central Asia that rarely appears in travel articles.

The author was a journalist based in India for many years and covers some memorable moments from his time there, plus his then current visit to India with his Indian wife and family. Kremmer recounts his presence at such important events in Indian history like the scattering of Gandhi's ashes following their discovery, as well as the ruling Congress Party and their then grip on India.

Certainly not the worst travelogue I've read.½

This non fiction account of Kremmer's extraordinary quest to establish the fate of the Laos Royal Family is gripping in its own right, but even more astonishing when read alongside the fictionalised account of the same events by Colin Cotterill, in his 'Disco for the Departed'. Kremmer is a fine journalist, but here he seems to channel LeCarre's 'Honorable Schoolboy' at his most reckless. How he survived without being shot or imprisoned - or at least deported - is a mystery. As both Cotterill and Kremmer make clear, this is not a subject that the Laotian authorities care to discuss much. The author's website confirms that this story was subsequently updated by Kremmer and re-issued under the title 'The Bamboo Palace'.½

The carpet wars by Christopher Kremmer is a hefty volume of some 480 pages. I had started reading the with quite a lot of interest, but gradually got increasingly irritated about the pretense of it.

The book is published with an introduction, acknowledgements, notes (10 pages), bibliography and suggested readings (7 pages), a glossary (5 pages), a timeline (1979-2003) and an index. These features give the book the feel of a very thoroughly documented volume, from which the reader might learn a great deal about "the Islamic heartlands".

It also gives us the feeling that the author or publisher wishes to lift the book up from the level of journalism to background documentation or a more steady nature. However, despite aforementioned props the editor / author has failed to do so. In the introduction, the author says that the largest part of the book was written before 2001, but the reader never finds out when exactly various parts of the book were written. In most publications of this kind, the acknowledgements or in another part of the book the reader may find an overview with thanks to publishers who printed or published earlier versions of articles or reports. Another elegant solution would have been printing a date or year at the top or foot of each section, but this has also been omitted. Meanwhile, the author makes minimal reference to current affairs which might give a clue to the date of the piece, with the exception of his mention that he had been to places before or had met people before up to 20 years earlier. One gradually gets the feeling that these temporal references have been intentionally omitted or removed.

Unfortunately, the respective articles have very little substance (only 10 pages of notes were added). Most of the text consists of the authors adventures, describing people and places in a freely detailed journalistic style, with small embellishments about history and anecdotes, to entertain the reader. A red thread throughout the book is the author's claimed interest in carpets. At times this motive is forced into the text, as in the case of the story of the man who wants to sell just one carpet. It much more seems that the author has inserted this thread as a ploy to connect the different stories, and create a sense of unity. The title remains puzzling, because there are no wars, really, let alone "carpet wars" whatever that might refer to.

The book consists of nine parts, most of which comprising three chapters, introducing Kabul, Kandahar, Peshawar, Baghdad, Tajikistan, Kashmir and Esfahan among other places. But after finishing the book, nothing memorable enough remains, except for descriptions and references to the Taliban's destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas. But without a distinctive time frame, events or theme, all sections seem very similar, and towards the end of the book one wonders if there is an overarching story to be told at all.½

I could be mistaken, but it seems the liberalism of information on the Internet has penetrated the world of traditional publishing. While in the past most books were written by the more serious type of scholarly or semi-scholarly author, there now seems to be a new large group of journalists or former journalists who have turned to producing books. These books have a different flavour. A fairly large number of these books are written by relatively young, adventurous authors. Perhaps the availability of so much background information through the Internet enables these writers to combine journalistic skills of collecting first-hand information with the otherwise time-consuming task of writing up background to a story.

Their style of writing is somewhat different from earlier authors. Less knowledgeable, less snobbery; more personal, interweaving the object of research, with personal anecdotes, so to speak the process of collecting facts, in an easy-going, free, personal style. In some cases, the writing has a distinctly journalistic flavour of exaggeration and typifying descriptions. On the whole, the reporting also seems less neutral.

One such a new type of author is Christopher Kremmer, who has written books about Central and Southeast Asian countries, such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, India, and Laos. Bamboo Palace. Discovering the lost dynasty of Laos is his second book about Laos.

Rather than a thorough description and analysis of recent Lao history, the book is a racy detective story, trying to uncover the fate of the late royal family of Laos. Photos of and visits to derelict buildings, sites in the jungle, chasing witnesses, seeking out survivors, adventure and a pinch of danger are typical. The author is prominently present in the text, and in photos as the agent uncovering the facts.

The book is very readable, giving us a glimpse of contemporary life in Laos, and lifting a tip of the veil on Laotian history. The author is indeed able to lay bare quite a considerable part of the mosaic of that part of history concerning the last months of the royal family, and how they perished in concentration camps.

However, the style of the book is very confusing, especially in the beginning. It is a mish-mash of journalism, travelogue and personal reflections. The description of the author's dream, and the peculiar cycling accident, which the author claims was caused by a "cursed" stolen buddha sculpture are peculiar and undermine the sanity of the author and credulity of the book.

Laos is a country not much spoken of, and little known. This book is an interesting contribution to our knowledge of that country. It has whetted my appetite to know more about this country.

From a hostel in El Chalten, Argentina. I picked this up as it is not often you see books on Laos. Much more is known of its neighbours, Vietnam and Cambodia, which were also part of French Indochina.

An Australian journalist goes to Laos to find out the fate of the royal family, the book is an updated version of Stalking the Elephant Kings. As he travels through the country, he visits historical sites, meeting people - surviving members of the royal family, of the communist party, former political prisoners - , and asks searching questions.

The fate of the royal family is linked with the story of its people. The royal family had a chance to escape, but didn't, or at least the King and Queen did not, and the party have still not definitively explained what happened. They were not the only ones who faced difficult decisions in the wake of the civil war and also the purges in the ruling party, many Laotians left for neighbouring countries, or even overseas. He meets with a man held for many years in camps in the country, a party member, without ever being able to notify his family. The conditions of the camps were horrendous, indeed it appeared that those in charge were trying to kill them off, not quickly, but by starving them and breaking their morale.

Also mentioned are the American military personnel still unaccounted for, Kremmer hears stories of them being held in caves. They are a reminder that the Vietnam war did not confine itself to that country's borders, but fighting and bombs spilled over the border, bombs which are still causing damage even now.

Well researched, an insight into a relatively isolated country, which is surprising considering the amount of foreign interference in its history.½

Loved this book after travelling through Laos. Part travelogue, part mystery my interest was maintained throughout. A great insight into an often forgotten land with dark secrets.½

Excellent read. A travel book with a difference as the writer tries to uncover what happened to the Laos Royal Family after the Communists took charge. He travels far and wide through Laos meeting very interesting characters along the way, ending up near the border with Vietnam. Part travelogue, part history book, part mystery a great insight into a little known world. I have travelled through Laos and that was my main reason for reading the book but if you have heard nothing about this beautiful country this book will still be a worthwhile read.½

A good read about the fate of the Royal family of Laos and the author's attempts to find out the truth.

Christopher Kremmer's book takes you on a journey through the Central Asian countries most frequently in the news today, and provides an incomparable insight. The largest, and first, section, is an account of events in Afghanistan, which he has witnessed first-hand as a foreign correspondent.
This book is no dry history, nor is it merely a travelogue, nor is it merely an extended piece of journalism.

Kremmer comes to know and befriend people of different backgrounds within the region, and it is their stories, as well as the carpet trade and stories of emblematic carpets, through which the narrative is woven. We care about the future of the peoples of the region, because we care about what becomes of Kremmer's friends.

What Christopher has managed to do is to make the internecine politics, the inhumanities, the brutalities, comprehensible, through his humanisation of peoples who might in lesser hands be reduced to the merely 'exotic' or even worse 'unknowable and inhuman'.

Other books to read if you are interested are 'Unexpected Light: Travels in Afghanistan' by Jason Elliot and 'The Root of Wild Madder' by Brian Murphy.

I thoroughly recommend these books if you desire to reach some understanding of a region of such importance to us all.