By Azera Rahman, IANS
New Delhi : Jonathan Freedland, author of the bestseller “The Last Testament”, says the inspiration for his book came from “one of the most dramatic events of recent times” – the looting of the Baghdad museum of antiquities in 2003.
Thousands of invaluable historical items were either destroyed or stolen when the museum was pillaged. And Freedland, who has spent a good 20 years of his life covering the Middle East conflict as a journalist, imagined the fate of one of these stolen items and wove it into the book.
“The initial inspiration was seeing an event I consider to be one of the most dramatic of recent times – the looting of the National Museum of Antiquities in Baghdad, directly after the American and British invasion in 2003,” Freedland told IANS in an e-mail interview.
“Many, many precious objects were stolen in that chaos – ‘The Last Testament’ imagines the fate of one of them,” said the author, whose pen name is Sam Bourne.
The book was released in India this month.
His earlier work, “The Righteous Man”, which was released in 2002, was all about fundamentalist religion, mysticism and biblical prophecies and was along similar lines as Dan Brown’s bestseller, “The Da Vinci Code”.
Translated into 28 languages, the book was a huge hit and was the number one bestseller in Britain as well.
Talking about the similarity between his earlier book and Dan Brown’s work, Freedland said the comparison was rather flattering, as “The Da Vinci Code” had gone to “find so many million readers across the world”.
Coming back to “The Last Testament”, the book begins in the backdrop of the loot of the Baghdad museum of antiquities and the discovery of an ancient clay tablet in a long forgotten vault by a teenage Iraqi boy, who runs away with it in the dead of the night.
Several years later, at a peace rally in Jerusalem, the Israeli prime minister is about to sign a historic deal with the Palestinians. A man approaches from the crowd and seems to reach for a gun when the prime minister’s bodyguards shoot him dead.
But the man is found to be carrying a note he wanted to give the prime minister.
The shooting sparks a series of tit-for-tat killings that could derail the peace accord. Washington sends for trouble-shooter and peace negotiator Maggie Costello.
She follows a trail that takes her from Jewish settlements on the West Bank to Palestinian refugee camps, where she discovers the latest deaths are not random but have a distinct pattern. All the dead men are archaeologists and historians, those who know the buried secrets of the ancient past.
Costello soon gets pushed into high-stakes international politics, the worldwide underground trade in stolen antiquities and a last, unsolved riddle of the Bible.
“I’ve been covering the Middle East conflict as a journalist for nearly 20 years, and I used much of that knowledge in this book.
“More directly, I was involved in an informal peace dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians convened by The Guardian in 2002 – talks which eventually evolved into the Geneva Accords, and I drew on that experience when writing my lead character, Maggie Costello,” Freedland said.
Comparing “The Last Testament” with his earlier book, Freedland said both of them are fast paced with many twists and turns and deal with material drawn from the real world.
“The big difference, I suppose, is that ‘The Last Testament’ is rooted in the here and now, in a present-day conflict that is all too real. The background is, I hope, accurate and authentic.
“It is also about something that really matters, a conflict that many say is the most bitter in the entire world,” he said.
Written over a period of one year, “The Last Testament”, Freedland said, might draw a negative response from certain people just like “The Da Vinci Code” did.
“When you write about the Middle East conflict, I have learnt that it is always possible for people to get offended. The issues are just so sensitive,” he said.
“Nevertheless, I hope the book is accurate in what it says about both sides and so far there have been no complaints saying otherwise,” Freedland added.