This is Not Civilization: a novel
Robert Rosenberg
Houghton Mifflin, June 2004
288 pp.
Translation: Lowenstein-Yost Associates
Book description:
In the tradition of Prague and White Teeth, This Is Not Civilization is an inspired, sweeping debut novel that hopscotches from Arizona to Central Asia to Istanbul with a well-meaning, if misguided, young Peace Corps volunteer. Jeff Hartig lies at the center of this modern take on the American-abroad tale, which brings together four people from vastly different backgrounds, each struggling with the push and pull of home. A young Apache, Adam Dale, forsakes the reservation for the promise of a world he knows little about. Anarbek Tashtanaliev, of post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan, operates a cheese factory that no longer produces cheese. Nazira, his daughter, strains against the confines of their village’s age-old traditions. With captivating insight, realism, and humor, Robert Rosenberg delivers a sensitive story about the cost of trying to do good in the world.
With captivating insight, realism, and humor, this stunning debut novel tells the parallel stories of two native villages, each facing cultural extinction. It’s the end of the twentieth century, and in the towering mountains of post-Soviet Central Asia, Anarbek Tashtanaliev is single-handedly providing for his small village in the face of a collapsed economy. But the cheese factory he manages no longer produces any cheese, and his favorite daughter has been stolen in an ancient nomadic courting ritual. When he is ruthlessly blackmailed, Anarbek finds himself at a crossroads between the traditional past and the uncertain future. He stands to lose everything he loves. Half a world away, in the high canyons of Arizona, Adam Dale is a young Apache basketball star and the future hope of his tribe. He struggles to keep his family together amid the pressures of reservation poverty and the corrupt rule of his increasingly bull-headed father, the tribal councilman. Anarbek and Adam seek out the one person they think will be the solution to all their problems: a peripatetic American aid worker who’d once volunteered in both of their villages. Now working as a refugee resettlement officer in Istanbul, Jeff Hartig must suddenly play host to first one, then both of these men from his past. Soon, Anarbek’s disgraced daughter joins them and the unlikely foursome find themselves sharing an apartment in the magical, sprawling city. Equally fascinated and perplexed by one another, they discover hope, then friendship, then love, unaware that they will soon face one of the most disastrous earthquakes of the century. Yet it is only in traveling so far, and surviving so much, that each person realizes his or her own capacity to endure. Sweeping, compassionate, and deeply moving, this novel celebrates the power of human connection in a largely unsettled world. Robert Rosenberg is an original and important new voice in contemporary fiction.
Rosenberg’s ambitious and addictive first novel brings to life a culturally diverse group of well-meaning characters whose ambitions exceed their grasp.
Anarbek Tashtanaliev runs a Soviet cheese factory that produces no cheese, and his favorite daughter has been stolen in an ancient courting ritual. But the United States sends to his Kyrgyz village what he hopes will be the solution to all his problems: an American Peace Corps volunteer. Jeff Hartig has just left an Apache reservation where he failed to keep a teen center up and running. Saddened but still hopeful that he can effect positive change, Jeff arrives in Central Asia ill prepared for Anarbek"s fervent ambitions and the aggressively hospitable local culture. He finds himself teaching English to milkmaids and entangled in Anarbek"s corrupt business schemes, again left to wonder what difference he can make to a culture struggling to survive.
A few years later Anarbek, his daughter, Jeff, and Adam, an Apache from the reservation where Jeff worked, converge in Istanbul, and their fortunes become interwoven. The four share an apartment in the magical, sprawling city. Each on the run from the past, together they form a patchwork expatriate family, unaware that they will soon face one of the most disastrous earthquakes in history.
Exotic, romantic, and deeply moving, this novel brilliantly explores America"s relationship to indigenous peoples, the need to find morality amid corruption, and the connection between people and their homeland. It is also a touching love story about those caught between age-old tradition and the dangerous allure of the contemporary world.
Quotes and Reviews:
Highly Recommended, June 28, 2004 Reviewer: Ari Katz from Tashkent, Uzbekistan
Rosenberg captures the emotions, sensations, dilemmas and the essence of the American who lives abroad. The characters in this book are real, the situations true. The story is gripping, and the author makes no attempt to please the reader - the characters propel the narrative forward, not the writer. I couldn’t put it down.
Hot Deals
Debut Novel Draws HM Preempt
A first novel by a former Peace Corps worker who went on to the Iowa Writers Workshop so engrossed Houghton Mifflin’s Heidi Pitlor that she stayed up all night reading the manuscript and got Janet Silver to agree the next morning on a substantial six-figure offer for North American rights only. The author is Robert Rosenberg, and his book is This is Not Civilization. It is about a group of people, including a father and a daughter from Kyrgyzstan (a former Soviet republic), a U.S. aid worker and a youg Apache fleeing his reservation, who meet in Istambul on the eve of 1999’s huge earthquake; it is a study of people caught between old and new worlds, as well as a love story. (...) Rosenberg served in remote Kyrgyzstan and has also worked on na Indian reservation.
Publishers Weekly, January 20, 2003
I adored this book right away – the idea of it, a global, sweeping contemporary novel full of classical and accomplished writing, as well as an irressistable and modern sense of humor. I adored the characters – a young Apache basketball star who loves heavy metal; a central Asian dairy farmer whose cows produce no milk; his daughter, an English teacher whose ideas of love and marriage are more American than central Asian; and a Peace Corps volunteer who wants to save the world. Yes, this could be the beginning of a bad joke, but thankfully it’s far from that, and I preempted it in less than 24 hours for a hefty six-figure advance.
When Houghton-Mifflin signed up this book, Robert Rosenberg was finishing up at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, where for two years he held their most prestigious fellowship. Before that, like one of the characters in this book, Robert served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Kyrgyzstan, a newly independent former Soviet republic that borders China. His was only the second group to be sent there, and as he describes it, “At first I had no idea where Kyrgyzstan even was... I looked in an atlas, and my country of assignment was nowhere to be found. The Soviet Union stretched over two pages across the back of Asia. I was being sent to a country off the map, a place that did not seem to exist.” After his two years in Kyrgyzstan, the Peace Corps awarded him a fellowship to teach on the White Mountain Apache reservation in Arizona, where he helped establish their first high school. A few years later, he took a job teaching in Istambul, and arrived five days before the massive earthquake in 1999. Clearly, there are autobiographical elements to this novel, but it’s far from a roman-a-clef.
This is Not Civilization is impossible to put down. It’s a big, sweeping book with a gripping plot and one of those incredible and rare authors who seems se seasoned, so in command of his craft, that it’s hard to believe much this is a first novel. (...) Pulitzer Prize winner James Alan MacPherson says of the novel, “it’s a beautiful exploration of a contemporary Central Asia after the dissolution of the Soviet Union... and it allows its American protagonists, one white, one Apache Indian, to achieve self-definition against the landscape of contemporary Istambul. Robert should be thanked for his insights into Middle Eastern culture at a time when understanding of that troubled region is essential.”
We think this novel has incredible potential. It’s got a great, original story full of humor and real resonance, and complex, appealing characters unlike any others out there.
--From the editor, Heidi Pitlor
About the author:
Robert Rosenberg recently finished his M.F.A. at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he held Maytag and Teaching-Writing fellowships. Previously he served as a Peace Corps volunteer in newly independent Kyrgyzstan. He lived there for two years, and afterward the Peace Corps awarded him a fellowship to teach on the White Mountain Apache Reservation in Arizona while he completed his master’s in education. He lived in Cibecue, a small Apache village, and as one of the four original teachers he helped establish the village’s first high school. He also founded and edited a community magazine devoted to preserving the culture of the White Mountain Apache tribe. In 1999 he took a teaching job in Istanbul, arriving there five days before the August 17 earthquake.