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Review by Lora Friedenthal
For those who believe that The Great Masters of sci-fi are necessarily long gone, that the depth of their insight was greater due to a proximity to some essential force that we, as descendants, find always already out of our touch, that singular genius is all but evaporated from the modern writer, to you, I submit The Carpet Makers by Andreas Eschbach for consideration.
The story spans a hundred thousand years like a dancer. It is told through a dozen eyes. It is the history of a universe. It is the history of a single human life.
That sounds grandiose, no? But I believe it to be a thoroughly accurate description of what you’ll find in this book.
The hair-carpet makers of G101/2 spend their entire lives bent over a frame knotting the most intricate, elegant, beautiful carpets from the hair of their wives and daughters. One carpet takes a lifetime. And then a father passes his carpet to his son, and his son sells it for a fortune that will support him for his entire life—a life spent knotting a carpet. The whole planet considers this a sacred duty, and every other profession revolves around supporting, purchasing, and transporting the carpets to the Port City, where they are taken into space to adorn the Emperor-God’s palace. Everyone knows this. It is how it has always been.
Generation after generation, they make carpets for the palace, for their Emperor, who makes the stars shine and the sun rise.
In Eschbach’s hand, this labor, terrible and glorious, becomes an allegory for all human endeavor. As the story moves from one carpet maker’s house out into the cosmos, the reader must ask this question: What is it all for? It is the question asked obsessively throughout the book. Why do these people do this? The production of the carpets gives them meaning, but only because they have been raised to think that it has meaning. We are urged to suspect that perhaps these carpets go nowhere. Perhaps they do nothing. And perhaps the people on the planet making them are suffering under an oppressive system for no reason at all. And yet, what would they gain to be free? What would they do? Who would they be?
It is a philosophical exploration of faith and freedom and power. We are asked to consider big questions about purpose, without being led to any pat answers. But we are also asked to consider small questions about personal motivations and human nature. Eschbach captures the subtle motions of thought, of pride and frustration and anger that lay below the idealism of a culture finding its self-determination and spreading freedom to worlds that hadn’t known they were subjugated. Even heroes are complicated and not, necessarily, heroes.
I could describe the plot in greater detail, but that would ruin the discovery. And this book is truly about the discovery. Each chapter takes you one step further in the search for an answer to the puzzle of the hair-carpets, and it would be a travesty to give any of that answer away.
Anyone who reads this, I’d love to hear what you have to say. Masterful? Just really good? Am I crazy? I feel like this is a book that no one has ever heard of, and I’d like to know if I’m alone.
Lora Friedanthal
The Carpet Makers by Andreas Eschbach
Published by: Tor Books; New Ed edition (February 21, 2006)
ISBN-10: 0765314908
ISBN-13: 978-0765314901
Genre: Science Fiction
lora, you are not alone.
this book is a masterpiece. I usually avoid translation scifi because i feel something is lost between the writer and me in the process.
not here.
one of the best books i have read stand alone in the last five years.