SOURCE: “Cairene Treasures,” in American Scholar, Vol. 63, No. 1, Winter, 1994, pp. 137–40.

In the following positive review, Elukin argues that aside from Ghosh's occasional political diatribe against Western imperialism, In an Antique Land is an otherwise thought-provoking and well-written undertaking.

Like the Cairo Geniza, the wellspring of this seductive book, In an Antique Land, Amitav Ghosh's scholarly memoir is a treasure of interconnected historical ironies. The thriving Jewish community of medieval Cairo deposited many of its documents in the Geniza—a kind of cellar in the synagogue—in order to avoid inadvertently desecrating the biblical passages and invocations of God that peppered the writings. Letters, accounts, biblical manuscripts, and printed texts piled up in the Geniza until its discovery at the end of the nineteenth century. One Geniza text happily brought Amitav Ghosh to the Egyptian villages of Nashâwy and Lataîfa.

Ghosh, who comes from a Hindu family...