Day The story is great, and the prose, astounding. For the aged and experienced it is a eulogy. They will let it be seen and it will mark them as "in the know." For the student reader the novel is a warning. It will find a place on every academic's background bookshelf. Kay Mack It is a great book, what they call literature. I don't think there is another book with such clarity of world building and characterisations.
The tale also provides revealing insights into the realities of life on an archaeological expedition, the thrill of the intellectual chase, the excitement of ancient discovery, balanced by the hardships of living beneath the flails of an unforgiving desert sun. The episodes in the desert bring an often-hidden part of the world into view: the people and customs of the region, unchanged for centuries, the ram-fights and vodka-drinking and dancing girls, the corrupt officials and the hangover of the Soviet Union still lingering over a land populated by the proud descendants of warrior-nomads. Ode to Odin captures something ineffable, something universal, something beyond time. A friendship with a man who lives as a deity is subject to the slightest whim. Working with Odin can be a dangerous occupation. The enterprise largely depends on the charisma and genius of Odin, charming and fierce, handsome and capricious, the embodiment of self-belief, a man who lives as a God even as he pursues the origins of religion. Yet no success is guaranteed in a land of violence and corruption, of unforgiving deserts, populated by vodka-soaked and acrimonious Russians, Turkomen, Uzbeks, Kazakhs, Tatars and Karakalpaks. Their quest, to audaciously reach out for the cryptic origins of God, is an intellectual pursuit of the highest ambition. The two men forge a friendship on the anvil of the deserts of Central Asia as they embark on a search for the homeland of Zoroaster the Prophet, arguably the progenitor of monotheism. A young British archaeologist makes a deal with the devil, the brilliant but dangerously unpredictable Odin.
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