The Rage of the Vulture

by Barry Unsworth

"A novel of revelation . . . haunting." ―The New Yorker It is May 1908 and the Ottoman world is crumbling. Robert Markham, an Englishman in Constantinople, is newly posted to the British legation with his imperious wife and overly curious son. Markham's hidden life is about to make itself known as he forgets familial and patriotic ties in order to absolve a deep-seated guilt. Twelve years before, he had been involved with an Armenian woman. On the evening of their engagement, the Armenian massacres erupted. Saved by his British citizenship, he witnessed the brutal rape and murder of his fiancee. Amid the breakdown of the Turkish empire, he now seeks revenge.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Historical, Asia, 20th Century, British Literature, Novels

443 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1982

About the author

Barry Unsworth was an English writer known for his historical fiction. He published 17 novels, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times, winning once for the 1992 novel Sacred Hunger.

Reviews

[Nandakishore Mridula · Rating 2 out of 5]

*Mild spoilers*

I bought this book reading great reviews of Sacred Hunger by the same author - but apparently, this is one of his lesser efforts. It starts off well, but loses way in the middle, and ends in an absolute mess.

The period is 1908. The setting is Istanbul. The Ottoman Empire is in its death throes. The last Sultan, Abdul Hamid II (nicknamed "Abdul the Damned" because he helmed the empire at its declining stages, and hastened its demise), is ruling in all his paranoid glory. The constitution has been abrogated for the last three decades, and the country is in a state of almost continuous turmoil. The proverbial "Young Turks" of the Committee of Union and Progress is trying to dethrone the geriatric sovereign and bring in the rule of law. And in the background, the Armenian Genocide is quietly going on.

In this city in flux, we have our main protagonist Captain Robert Markham, a British army officer, who is a singularly unlikable character. He is still reeling under the pangs of remorse because he used his British identity to save his skin while his Armenian fiancee was raped and murdered in front of his eyes twelve years ago. Something which qualifies him to be a typical tragic hero looking for atonement and absolution, right? Like Lord Jim? Well, you couldn't be more wrong!

The way this douchebag takes care of his angst is to force himself on his son's governess, and seduce her (it's a near-rape) - then pour out his life story to her, expecting her to despise him. He is unhappy when she sympathises! In fact, as the story progresses, he does crazier and crazier things just to get the kick that he thinks he deserves.

Along with this story, there is the story of his ten-year-old son Henry in Part I of the book, and his friendship with a Turkish girl. This was really interesting, and I thought it was going somewhere and would have relevance to Markham's dilemma, but as with many other things, it also petered out to nothing.

In Part II, the political and historical background gets more prominent, and Markham's journey becomes inextricably intertwined with the journey of the country he is residing in. But this whole meandering section moves on from boring episode to boring episode until finally, one heaves a sigh of relief as it winds up. And the epilogue is just plain kooky.

This one can be given a miss.

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

While every page was a pleasure to read, it wasn't a satisfying overall experience as a novel. Not only was the protagonist unlikable (though his own self-loathing makes that understandable), it just didn't add up to all that much of a compelling story.

The turmoil in Constantinople in 1908, just before the removal of the last Ottoman sultan, coupled with the ascendancy of the Young Turks and the genocide perpetrated against the Armenians would seem to be compelling enough, but here they merely serve as a backdrop to the story of a British officer coming to grips with a cowardly act that occurred twelve years earlier.

If you are already a fan of Barry Unsworth, you might find it worthwhile. If not, then you should read Sacred Hunger, a great book by any measure.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 4 out of 5]

A novel which many reviewers have disliked, in particular they dislike the main character Robert Markham, but I rather enjoyed the novel and although Markham isn't 'likeable' I found him true to his time and period and ultimately to his caste. I doubt if I would like any diplomat from England's public school educated upper middle if I had met them in 1908. Their insecurities, foibles and inadequacies were brilliantly Somerset Maugham in a story (whose name I can't remember) but is clearly a roman a clef on Sir George Buchanan the UK ambassador to Russia at the time of the revolution. Maybe it is just me, but I don't expect necessarily to like or sympathise with the people I read about, so Markham's being a shite in many ways is neither here nor there. He is a complex, flawed and imperfect man who fails almost everyone himself included. If ever there is a man whose classical education clearly failed to imbibe with the Socratic tools to know himself then Markham is that man.

But this novel is more than a tale of a conflicted minor British diplomat, it is the tale of the demise of the Ottoman empire Abdul Hamid II (who also is an absent but essential figure in Barry Unsworth's novel 'Pascali's Island'). It is a gloriously rich and evocative portrayal of Istanbul on the eve of the Young Turk's usurpation power. I loved that aspect of the novel but it is a period of history I love and have read about.

It is a long time since I read this novel and it is possibly I might like it more, maybe less, but I do remember how much I did like it so I have no hesitation in awarding it four stars.

[Old Man JP · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not one of Unsworth better books. The story takes place in 1908 and follows Robert Markham who is in the British military and has recently been assigned to Constantinople. The first half of the book is mostly about his troubled marriage and a sexual affair he was in with a young woman. It also tells of his memories of an event that occurred twelve years previously when he had been engaged to an Armenian woman who was raped and murdered in front of him during a massacre of Armenians by the Kurds. Also, going on at the same time is the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. The first part of the book ends with his wife discovering his affair and leaving with their son to return to England. Then the second half of the book has Markham trying to avenge the murder of his Armenian fiancé and come to terms with what ultimately was his cowardice. It was an interesting read because, of what was the backstory, that told a lot about the history of the Turkish region but the main story fell short.

[Julian · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF. 200/443 A whole lot of nothing happening but the story was just super whack. I can sit through slow novels but this was paint on wall boring. The husband sucks, the supporting characters sucked, only the son was cool. If the story was about the son and his friend I think it would have made for a far better time.

[Alan · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wanted to love this book so bad. The setting was fantastic, the plot description gave me a Count of Monte Cristo vibe, and I was excited to see how everything would play out in the beginning of the book. But as I slogged through this book, I just could not find more than one redeemable quality in this book.
The book is split into two parts. Part one is one of the worst plots I have ever read. Markham is the worst character I have ever read in a book so far. While his internal conflict is compelling, the decisions he makes due to these conflicts are something that does not make sense at all, like his disgusting scene with Miss Taverner. I ended part one of this book just feeling confused why Markham was doing actions that scarred him for the past twelve years.
Part two did have one redeeming quality in it. Markham's conversation with Fehmi towards the end of the book was about the only thing I liked in this 430 page book. Was it worth slogging through the other 400 pages to get to that point? Hell no. Part two just kinda ends with no real pay off for the story, no real understanding about why Markham is such an awful person, and just a general feeling of a reader wasting his time.

TLDR: I wasted my time on this book so other do not. Read another book, this one is not worth the effort and time.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful historical novel by a master-craftsman of the genre.It tells the dramatic story of both the death throes of the Ottoman Empire & the personal traumas of an English diplomat with a troubled conscience, set in 1908, when the massacres of Armenians & other ethnic groups were coming close to a genocide.
Edward Markham, upper lip quivering, descends into his-hell-in-Constantinople...confronting eccentric characters, strange meetings & his unfaithful heart...but emerges emotionally damaged, as mayhem & murder take their terrible toll. Unsworth captures an era & an empire rarely chosen as a subject for writers but this 450-odd page novel dazzles with its depth & its colour, & stands testament to how little we all know about the world of the vicious Ottoman autocrats & their treatment of Armenian & Greek Christians in the name of their religious devotion.

[Marilyn Saul · Rating 2 out of 5]

I struggled mightily through this book, many times thinking I'd just abandon it. The main character (Markham) is a singularly unlikeable person with few, if any, redeeming qualities. No, make that NO redeeming qualities. What kept me going was the early 20th century history of the demise of the Ottoman Empire. Of course, it may have all been fabricated by the author, who cites no sources, but I choose to believe that much of the author's rendition contained some authenticity. I really cannot recommend this book.

[Chris · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is not one of my favorite books but I include it here as the main character is so well-developed (unlikeable as he is). I found myself fascinated by how a life can be shaped by an act of cowardice that may very well be an act of survival.

[Reid Sharkey · Rating 2 out of 5]

Like others, I wanted to like this book very much. The setting is established and reinforced beautifully over and over again. Unsworth goes to great lengths to ensure that Constantinople is just as much a part of the story as any character. However, the things that could make this book good are just too few and far between.

Markham's internal conflicts are interesting, yet they are not sufficiently developed through the middle stages of the book. Instead of internal moral quarrels, Markham abuses those around him and whines for like 100 pages before we get any interesting introspection about his actions and beliefs. When those analyses do come through conversations with Fehmi, Tarquin, and Nejib it is rewarding; however, there could have been more consistent development of these ideas in Markham throughout the book.

Overall, I would have preferred the book to be 3/4 the length, cutting out the middle quarter of the story. The plot hits a major lull and the strengths of the setting and moral, religious, and political analyses are not strong enough to carry it.

[Sarah Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has such a wonderful sense of place and time. I love Istanbul, and this book transported me there for a while. However, I thoroughly disliked the protagonist, so it was hard to keep reading about him. Also, the story of the Armenians has been better told I think, not that it can’t be again.

[Vincent Hernot · Rating 5 out of 5]

You want to know what proper literature is?
This.
No need for pyrotechnics (altough his writing is pitch-perfect, masterful in its effects), for salacious moments or endless digressions.
Use historical context in a real-souding, very effective, surprising way.
Have a good story, solid characterisation, points to make.
Write. Serve. Enjoy.

[Lawrence Davies · Rating 5 out of 5]

Actually read this many years ago, but I remember it being excellent. I'm only giving it a quick review now as I've just finished Louis de Bernières' wonderful Birds Without Wings, also set in the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

[Janice · Rating 4 out of 5]

Makes me realize that I don't know enough European history.

[Angela]

Quit halfway through.

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

From the early 1980s, Unsworth started to establish himself as a major historical novelist. In 1980 he had been shortlisted for the Booker with 'Pascalli's Island'. 'The Rage of the Vulture' (1982) is similarly a historical treatment of Asia Minor. As his reputation grew, Unsworth would soon thereafter receive fellowships from both Durham and Newcastle. He would subsequently shift his attentions to the Atlantic, first in 1988's Liverpool-set 'Rum and Sugar' (contemporary but with historical flashbacks), and most famously in 'Sacred Hunger'. The latter brought wider recognition to Unsworth, with the 1992 Booker Prize and republication of his back-catalogue.

Having read through Unsworth's novels in order from 1966 to 1982, I have been tracking through his enduring interest in both the Eastern Mediterranean and the UK. Some of Unsworth's earlier dark humour remains into the 1980s, but notably less prominently than his UK-based black comedies like 'The Hide ' or 'The Big Day' where elements of farce were allowed to play beneath the mental and social dissolution of Unsworth's oddbods. In contrast, the sombre backdrop for 'The Rage of the Vulture' is the Armenian massacre and persecution from the 1890-1900s. Consequently, the levity form smaller points of light on a blacker fabric. In this respect, Unsworth took a similar path to his contemporary, Thomas Keneally. Both started writing in the mid-1960s, retained a comedic playfulness in at least some works, shifted to darker episodes in their historical fiction, and would win the Booker: Keneally for 'Schindler's Ark' in the same year that 'Rage of the Vulture' was published (1982); Unsworth himself exactly ten years later.

The shift in Unsworth's writing after 1980 comes with the extent of archival referencing to historical people and places; in this case transporting readers to cusp of the Ottoman Empire's fall (1908>), and to the paranoid dictatorship of Abdul Hamid II. From the opening scene with it telescope surveillance atop the Sultan's palace tower, Unsworth gives us returned gazes between ruler, western settler, and indigenous servant. It calls to mind Alan Bennett's later 'Madness of King George', where the monarch and medic claim supremecy in beholding the other in their own eye. In Unsworth the protagonist is Robert Markham, but Unsworth refused to allow western readers to just see things from his cosily familiar perspective. With Markham, we are made to feel slightly alien, and made to see things through multiple pairs of eyes.

Even in his slighter books, Unsworth can cannily capture the divergent two-way perspectives between characters. In this weightier Anatolian adventure Unsworth backs up his personality profiling with detailed observations on mode of life, motives and incident. It's a satisfying book, telling a familiar story of corrosive power, woven into a blood red carpet with all the intricate stitched-down details of a literary master craftsman.

[Steven Langdon · Rating 2 out of 5]

Barry Unsworth has written some wonderful novels, such as "Sacred Hunger." This book deals with another striking historical context, the overthrow of the Sultan of the Turkish empire and the period of Armenian massacres that preceded and then accompanied that. But the novel is focused around the private guilt and consequent cruel actions of an English officer who presents an unsympathetic and sad pivot for probing this tragic period. By the end, after rape and murder, Robert Markham seems to have been driven in inexplicable directions by the previous massacre of his Armenian fiancee and her family. And a potentially fascinating novel seems to have lost its way.

[Jeffrey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unsworth excels in evoking an era--1908 Istanbul--but this is the best feature of the novel. The plot is a catastrophe--all the conflicts set up in the first fifty pages are resolved by the end of Part I. Part II begins a new novel, one in which a mysterious gypsy woman gives aid and comfort to Markham, the rugged, rapey British protagonist with a dark secret shame. Abdul Hamid remains the most interesting figure in the novel--a small, paranoid, powerful and craven men (not unlike a contemporary Turkish leader I know). A loose baggy monster of a novel. Enjoyable, and problematic enough to make it interesting critically. But not for everyone.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am a big Barry Unsworth fan. This novel is set in Turkey at the time when the "Young Turks" were pushing to take over the dying Ottoman Empire, and it's told through the eyes of a British officer who is posted there. It is an involving plot with much intrigue and atmosphere, and it brings into sharp relief the Armenia massacre, which was indeed a massacre, no matter what the Turks insist upon today.

[Meme · Rating 4 out of 5]

More about Turkey in 1908 (end of Ottoman Empire) from point of view of British diplomat who had had a tragic love affair twenty years before with an Armenian girl. Wonderful descriptions of Istanbul, life in the palace, and his present family life. A good companion to Bird without Wing by Louis de Bernieres. He also has another book about a Greek island at the same time, Pascali's Island, which I hope to read soon.

[Rita · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good read. One learns about the end of the Ottoman empire in Turkey
through the eyes of a damaged individual drawn into the political changes
around him by his personal history. Unlike many "heros" Markham is in his own way as corrupt as the heroes he tries to help. There are no good guys in this book even though it gives us the background to the Armenian
genocide of "innocents".

[Kim · Rating 2 out of 5]

Historical fiction....1906 Ottoman empire, Constantinople....the fall of the Ottoman empire from a Britian's perspective.

At any point in reading, I could have put the book aside and promptly forgot about it. However, I really like Sacred Hunger.

[Liviu · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book starts quite intriguing but then it fizzles a lot; I think that the author style is not really suited to long novels with many characters that cover momentous events since this book just does not know what it wants ultimately - intrigue, historical epic, tale of a genocide...

[Carol · Rating 3 out of 5]

Set in Constantinople in 1908. Lead character is a British army officer. Didn't take to the people in the story much but I did learn about the Ottoman/Turkish empire and the Armenian massacres of which I had no knowledge.

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

meh

anticlimactic
disorganized
flat

didn't think unsworth could disappoint me so

[Charlottekilpatrick]

Didn't actually finish this one, it's been put on hold

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not his best but worth reading for the tour of the Ottoman Empire's final days and the underpublicized Armenian genocide.

[Jacqueline · Rating 2 out of 5]

Great evocation of the time and place, but the hero was unlikeable and his interactions with others flat.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

Harwich Road.

[Dianne · Rating 3 out of 5]

I hated the main character but I think that was Unsworth's point!