The Lost Civilization of Suolucidir

by Susan Daitch

"With shades of Umberto Eco and Paul Auster, this brilliant, addictive adventure novel is about the search for a mythical lost city located somewhere in modern-day Iran. As a succession of explorers and shady characters dig deeper into the landscape, the ancient secret of Suolucidir is gradually revealed. This is brainy, escapist fiction at its best."-- Publishers Weekly, Starred & Boxed Review "The author's prose is rich with winking allusions and sendups of modern tomb-raiding tropes, down to an explorer with 'a long stiff braid down her back.'"-- The New Yorker " . . . cerebral, satirical, and entertaining archaeological thriller . . . this richly crafted and handsomely written novel rewards rereading."--David Cooper, New York Journal of Books "It's always a delight to discover a voice as original as Susan Daitch's."--Salman Rushdie "One of the most intelligent and attentive writers at work in the US today."--David Foster Wallace A series of archeological expeditions unfolds through time, each one looking for the ruins of a fabled underground city-state that once flourished in a remote province near the border of present-day Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. Sealed off for centuries by seismic activity, Suolucidir beckons with the promise of plunder and the glory of discovery, fantasies as varied as the imaginations of her aspiring modern-day conquerors. As the tumult of the twentieth century's great wars, imperial land grabs and anti-colonial revolutions swirl across its barren, deserted landscape, the ancient city remains entombed below the surface of the earth. A succession of adventurers, speculators and unsavory characters arrive in search of their prize, be it archeological treasure, oil, or evidence of crimes and punishments. Intrigue, conspiracies, and counter-plots abound, and contemporary events interfere with each expedition, whether in the form of the Axis advance, British Petroleum, or the Revolutionary Guards. People disappear, relics are stolen, and the city closes in upon itself once more. A satiric, post-colonial adventure story of mythic proportions, The Lost Civilization of Suolucidir takes place against a background of actual events, in a part of the world with a particular historical relationship to Russia and the West. But though we are treated to visual "evidence" of its actual existence, Suolucidir remains a mystery, perhaps an invention of those who seek it, a place where history and identity are subject to revision, and the boundaries between East and West are anything but solid, reliable, or predictable. Praise for The Lost Civilization of "Susan Daitch has written a literary barnburner of epic proportions. The question buried at the core of The Lost Civilization of Suolucidir is one of empirical--or is the imperial?--knowledge itself. Her labyrinthine tale of archeological derring-do calls to mind both 1984 and 2666, and does so by looking backward in time as well as forward. It is also utterly original, the work of a visionary writer with an artistic sensibility all her own."--Andrew Ervin, author of Burning Down George Orwell's House "This is a novel of archeology and history, of mythology and empire, powered by an undeniable call to adventure and a deep yearning for understanding, written by a novelist who manages to surprise on nearly every page."--Matt Bell, author of Scrapper "Daitch's latest is a beguiling and virtuoso companion to our inevitable a novel that wrenches, sentence by fine sentence, some order from the chaos, while never shortchanging the chaos itself."--Mark Doten, author of The Infernal "Daitch's novel is Indiana Jones for the introspective crowd--a continual, thrilling, and harrowing search for historical treasures."--Michelle Anne Schingler, Foreword Reviews

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Fantasy, Literature, Adventure

312 pages, Paperback

First published April 12, 2016

About the author

Susan Daitch is the author of four novels, L.C. (Lannan Foundation Selection and NEA Heritage Award), THE COLORIST, PAPER CONSPIRACIES, THE LOST CIVILIZATION OF SUOLUCIDIR and a collection of short stories, STORYTOWN. A novella, FALL OUT, published by Madras Press donates all proceeds to Women for Afghan Women. Her work has appeared in Tinhouse, Lit Hub, Slice, Black Clock, Conjunctions, Guernica, Bomb, Ploughshares, The Barcelona Review, Redivider, Zeek, failbetter.com, McSweeney's, Salt Hill Journal, Pacific Review, Dewclaw, Dear Navigator,
The Library of Potential Literature, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, and The Norton Anthology of Postmodern American Fiction. Her work was featured in The Review of Contemporary Fiction along with William Vollman and David Foster Wallace. She has been the recipient of two Vogelstein awards and a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship. She has taught at Barnard College, Columbia University, and the Iowa Writers' Workshop and currently teaches at Hunter College.

Reviews

[Andrew]

Susan Daitch seemed to have been regarded as a bold new voice in American fiction -- mentioned alongside David Foster Wallace when he was a young buck, I believe -- before falling somewhat by the wayside. However, this really is a pretty damn captivating book, with strong echoes of Umberto Eco at his best. It's hard to believe this was published in 2016. There's so little regard for the tastes of the present moment, and I find Daitch's ambition in this regard truly admirable. She could have easily written this story as some bullshit Anthony Doerr magical realism, or -- horror of horrors -- Paulo Coelho preciousness, but she chose not to. She chose to write something challenging and peculiar. Good on her.

[Mark · Rating 1 out of 5]

The Lost Civilization of Suolucidir
Author: Susan Daitch
Publisher: City Lights Books
Published In: San Francisco, CA
Date: 2016
Pgs: 310

REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS

Summary:
A fabled, lost underground city-state near the present borders of Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. Sealed away for centuries, prey to glory hunters, archaeologist, soldiers, adventurers, plunderers, robbers, and thieves. Expeditions over time search and find...or almost find. Seismic activity makes the promise of plunder and discovery come at a price. Modern day conquerors chase their fantasies through the border regions. Imperial land grabs, anti-colonialism, treasure, oil, crime, punishment, intrigue, conspiracy, plot and counterplot. The Axis, British Petroleum, the Revolutionary Guards. People, relics, and the city itself, all could disappear back into the darkness and mystery. Suolucidir awaits, but it doesn’t necessarily want to be found.

Genre:
Academics
Adventure
Alternate History
Ancient Knowledge
Fiction
Historical fiction
Pulp

Why this book:
Indiana Jones vs the modern world with a fabled city in the balance. Yeah, I’m in.
______________________________________________________________________________

Least Favorite Character:
Ruth Kopek. She is so focused on her own study and academia that she doesn’t see what the narrator is chasing. That’s not really fair, but his recollection of the dissolution of their marriage and their short married life together colors the interpretation of her character. She doesn’t come across well. This colors the early pages of the book and drags the narrative off course from the point of the book.

The Feel:
The narrator’s “I’ll show her and she’ll come running back to me” attitude toward his cheating wife as he sets out for Tehran and the hunt for Suolucidir almost made me put the book down. I know it is a real life attitude. But it strikes such a sour note in the course of the text that it is coloring my enjoyment.

Feels like Ocean’s Eleven without an exit strategy.

Pacing:
Through the early stages of the book, the brief touch on Suolucidir is excellent. The all too brief touchstone where we learn about the Nieumachers and the narrator’s father’s coming into possession of their books and writings is well paced as well. The pace falls flat when we visit the pages detailing the narrator’s married life with Ruth and his attempt to convince her to join him in his search for Suolucidir.

By and large, many of the paragraphs are too pregnant, too trucked with meaning, overly adverbed and adjectived. They may be beautiful, but they are just too much for story flow and dynamics.

Plot Holes/Out of Character:
Lots of circuitousness and repetition with similar events occurring to characters traveling in similar circles at different points in the timeline.

Hmm Moments:
The narrator searching for Suolucidir artifacts and the city itself when he notices that everywhere he goes he’s being shadowed. The Iranian secret police are following him. Though whether this is the Shah’s SAVAK or the Ayatollah's followers is unclear at the time he notices them the first time.

The Nieumachers’ forger past casts their scroll, that Bokser had, in a different light.

Meh / PFFT Moments:
The Suolucidir that he finds just as the hostages are taken in 1979 Tehran is too perfect. Unburied, just in an underground cavern. Too perfectly preserved. This challenges the suspension of disbelief. A near pristine cavernous city instead of a Pompei-like buried civilization.

The narrator, Ariel Bokser, esacpes Khomeini’s Iran way too easily for a man without a passport, especially an American in that Great Satan era. Scene reads like Affleck’s Argo without the drama.

So...a German archaeology professor who is actually a Latvian Jew escapes prewar Berlin to pretend to be a French dealer in antiquities and foregeries in the south of France. In Marsailles, he reencounters two of his German students who were also pretending to be French who in Berlin were German Jews, but were actually Russian and who to find Suolucidir carry on pretending to be fake French involved in a faux Franco-Soviet Friendship Dig in Iran where they are the fake French and the fake Soviets aren’t coming. ...Boris and Natasha. ...where are Moose and Squirrel? And the Jewish Latvian German archaeology professor nee French dealer in antiquities nee receiver of stolen goods is named Feigen...Fagin...Oliver Twist...meh. Combine this with the Ariel Bokser-Jahanshah Rostami masquerade switch from Part One in which a third man was killed and believed to be Ariel Bokser while both of them were both pretending to be Bokser after the real Bokser’s return from post-Shah Iran. Phew. I really feel like we need a scorecard to keep up with who is pretending to be who and when and where.
______________________________________________________________________________

Last Page Sound:
It’s all chimera. It’s all smoke. It’s all cheshire. No revelation. Other than a comment on all who search for Suolucidir seeing and being reflections, which was telegraphed so hard all the way through that it hardly needed mentioning. I expected something from this book that wasn’t here.

Author Assessment:
No. I’m afraid I’ll pass.

Editorial Assessment:
The real history of Reagan-Khomeini era Iran is mashed together in this book. Time is noticeably compressed. We seemed to go from the embassy hostages to Iran Contra way too fast considering the other events in Bokser’s life.

I almost put the book down just before the end of Part 1. The Ariel Bokser-Jahanshah Rostami section could have stood a little closer to the editor’s pen.

Trude Feigen’s fate. The paragraph where it is described in one instance we are told that the woman couldn’t be identified and in the next we’re told that it is Trude. But her husband disappeared and isn’t seen again locally. Double but, how did they know it was her? Shrug.

If you hang the muddled no-one-is-who-they-seem-to-be characters together with the fast and loose real timeline events, this becomes a difficult read to stay on top of.

Knee Jerk Reaction:
not as good as I was lead to believe

Disposition of Book:
Irving Public Library
South Campus
Irving, TX

Dewey Decimal System:
F
DAI

Would recommend to:
no one
______________________________________________________________________________

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

4+ stars. I really enjoyed this novel about the search for the lost city of Suolucidir. It follows three different groups of archaeologists - or is that all they really are? One group is British, one Russian and one American and they cover a timespan from the early 1900's through the 1980's. Lots of mysterious goings-on until you're never really sure who's who or what's what. But rest assured, all ties together at the end. A fascinating read and I already intend to read it again one day soon.

[Sarah Furger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Daitch's novel is brilliant. As one blurb on the back describes it, The Lost Civilization of Suolucidir is like Indiana Jones meets Umberto Eco meets Italo Calvino meets Heart of Darkness. I was completely engrossed from the first page, the characters as well as the plot were engaging and thought provoking. I love how Daitch framed her tale, weaving past and present through document types, leaving enough questions unanswered for me to ponder for a long time. As a historian, the thought of cities lying in wait in the desert, found briefly only to be lost again through human greed and political conniving is a story I know all too well; but even for someone without the Middle East historical knowledge I brought to this book, it's a page-turning mystery and a fantastic read. 5 stars!

[Howard Cincotta · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book much more than I did. It had, after all, about every ingredient I enjoy in a suspenseful story: lost desert cities, mysterious manuscripts, conspiracies, cover-ups, and characters full of secrets. The novel, actually a set of interlocking stories, range from the 1979 Iranian revolution to the 1930s, and finally back to 1914, prior to World War I.

This is an ambitious book that melds a number of literary traditions. Lost Civilization aspires to be a sweeping historical/literary romance, like Shadow of the Wind, combined with postmodern elements, like Calvino and Borges, in which reality is as unstable as the desert sands of northern Iran, where Suolucidir appears and disappears. The references to obscure Middle Eastern history and arcane languages — Amharic, ancient Farsi, classical Hebrew — come thick and fast, and the narrative remains as dense and elusive, as self-referential and circular, as any novel I’ve read recently.

At times, it just felt too exhausting, with the reader turning the corner from one hall of mirrors to confront another. (For example, I just read Alan Furst’s recent Hero of France, set in the 1941 Nazi occupation of France,. If Furst’s flat narrative lacks much depth and literary ambition, Daitch’s Lost Civilization is quite the opposite, suffering from a surfeit of both.)

On one level, there is little mystery that the physical city known as Suolucidir. Each expedition, with many tribulations and false starts, finds a set of mysterious ruins, mosaics, pottery shards, and fragmentary manuscripts. To her credit, however, Daitch doesn’t indulge in Lost-Ark touches such as crystal skulls, living-dead mummies, or timeless curses — although a pair of Russian spies proves quite scary.

But the meaning of Suolucidir (a name I find impossible to pronounce) is far more elusive. It seems to have possessed a heady mixture of languages and cultural traditions. But was it an ancient Hebrew or Persian city, a polyglot trade center, or the capital of some other forgotten civilization? That mystery remains.

As Daitch concludes: “The lost city is the object that always recedes just out of reach, and at the same time mirrors its excavators, whether they recognize their reflections in its pools and canals or, momentarily blinded, catch sight of only unfamiliar phantoms.”

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

Billed as an adventure novel about a hunt for a fabled lost civilization with "shades of Calvino," what one finds instead is half an adventure novel that largely abandons its protagonist approximately one-third of the way in and turns into an epistolary novel about a cache of documents left by prior explorers. Many of the historical events are muddled, although whether intentionally or not is never clear (e.g., a scene set in 1979 has an "Aladdin figurine from Disneyworld" and no time machines; a scene ostensibly set in 1914 contains an oblique reference to breaking news about the Titanic sinking, and so on). In addition, in one section laid out as a diary, the diarist appears to have written the entries long after their dates, to a distracting degree (many references to never seeing such-and-so again, for instance). So, why frame it as a diary? There are some lovely turns of phrase here and there, but throughout, the novel is persistently over-written--present even in the most basic descriptions, each of which are deemed to deserve multiple evocative synonyms--to the point where it actively impedes the narrative.

Granted, I don't think this novel is aiming at any sort of realism (after all, who writes 30-page-long letters?), but I don't think it hits Calvino or Eco, either. The Lost Civilization of Suolucidir left me, like so many of its seekers, vaguely unsatisfied.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is far from being an Indiana Jones style adventure, although adventurer archaeologists search for a lost civilization somewhere in the Iranian desert. The first clue is in the opening, when "for whatever reason, the city was destroyed" very suddenly by catastrophe of sand storm or volcano or earthquake. The second clue is Ariel Bokser's actual stumbling into the ruins of Suolucidir and finds really a subterranean city in cavities or caves. Hardly archaeological realism. The story is a kaleidoscope of several characters with false identities or identities exchanged for survival, stories that shift depending on the time or the teller, of lost scrolls and artifacts, of archives and libraries and museums where elusive clues hide. Threading through the characters' searches for Suolucidir are the threats of political upheaval--of the overthrow of the Shah and the rise of the Ayatollahs in Iran, of anti-Semitism in Germany, of Stalinist secret police in Russia, of colonial British agents and bureaucrats vying with other nations for control of Persian oil. After another 1,000 years, what will remain of our civilization? And is the search for the treasures of the past "full of anything you think you desire?" Challenging and rich reading.

[Nina · Rating 3 out of 5]

[Colleen · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked this book until about halfway through. Then, everything felt disjointed and not related to the original story line. I simply lost interest.

[lisa_emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

After reading this novel I read the short story by Borges titled: Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius
and thought- hmmmmm.

[M M · Rating 5 out of 5]

For me, The Lost Civilization of Sulocidir was an astonishing, ambitious, transporting, intelligent, ravishingly ambitious work of art. In Daitch's story about the search for a city of Los Tribes of Israel, Daitch has crafted a narrative with masterly skill, delivering prodigious amounts of historic detail gracefully and dramatically (without the whiff of sharing one’s homework), while at the same time pondering the possibility of multiple possibilities of a lost civilization - the place itself and those who sought it out.

The novel artfully addresses the ephemeral nature of history (how do we know what actually happened anywhere - including within ourselves?), the provisional nature of knowledge, experience, even existence itself, all shifting, entombing and arising from history’s vast deserts - in ways stimulating, emotionally compelling and beautifully integrated into the compelling narrative. Daitch offers up multiple possibilities for characters seeking this lost city in a series of conflicting stories that nonetheless possess narrative skill and drive.

I was particularly moved by the scene at the end of the book when an anthropologist seeks out the lost papers of an adventurer papers in a New York Institute’s basement. The boxes of documents and ephemera present themselves like buried artifacts, most never to be seen or touched ever again, lives, like Suolucidir itself, lost and forgotten for eternity – even the fact of their existence lost forever.

The mastery of time and place is just one of the book’s many technical accomplishments that provided vast enjoyment – as were the delicate touches, like a neat surgeon’s slice, of major world events – Nazism, Stalin’s Terror (a subject of interest to me), the Titanic, etc. – occurring at the periphery of the action but subtly shaping the world of the characters.

Those seeking a single plot line - the Da Vinci Code, say - may not find the book or the ideas to their liking. But I found the remarkable sense of place, history and mystery, combined with bold ambitious ideas enthralling and rewarding.

[Laura Longoria · Rating 1 out of 5]

For me---the prologue was the best part of this book! It drew me in and kept me going for a few chapters until I was unable to muster interest nor enthusiasm. I truly wanted to like it....

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

"After reading The Lost Civilization of Suolucidir readers will want to start over again to see what details they may have missed the first time through, and yes, this richly crafted and handsomely written novel rewards rereading. It also demonstrates that an ironic post-modern novel of ideas can be suspenseful and include complex characters readers can care about while feeling powerless to alter their fates." -- from my review of The Lost Civilization of Soulucidir by Susan Daitch in New York Journal of Books

[Scribal · Rating 4 out of 5]

After quick googling of definitions and slight memories of middle school Latin, I've decided for myself that "suolucidir" means something like "sufficiently illuminated in and of itself." That would make sense for a name of this ancient, elusive, ruined city.

It doesn't need to be found because wherever it exists or does not exist is enough. This is a novel about stories and what use people make of them more than it is a mystery or a treasure hunt. Or another way to put it: it's about the essence of Romance, the unattainable sublime.

I might have given it 5 stars if the first section of the story, the opening narrative that frames the other narratives had been more compelling.

[Steven Raszewski · Rating 1 out of 5]

Another book I could not finish. After a hundred pages in I just could not turn another page. It became a chore not a joy reading as far as I did. I found I did not care one iota about the characters or the story. And Lord help me that writing style began to grate on my nerves 30 pages in. Maybe it's a New York thing. It certainly was not any Indiana Jones meets Umberto Echo as the accolades proclaimed. Too many great books out there to waste time on the sucky ones.

[Michael Norwitz · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was intrigued by the book from the outset, but only lasted a quarter of the way through. An account of a decades-long search of a (mythical) lost civilisation sounds like a book which would be right up my alley, but the endless digressions (and digressions-within-digressions), all involving characters whose lives we are never given reason to care about and meandering too far from the purported central premise of the book, lost my interest. Maybe it will make a good movie.

[Dlmrose · Rating 3 out of 5]

3+

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really loved how this story was told and how it pulled all the different time periods together. I could hardly put the book down.

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

It started great and lost me about helf way through. If it would have been more about the actual searching for the lost city.....

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Various people search for a lost city over the years, or not, as the case may be.

[Steven Felicelli · Rating 4 out of 5]

brought to mind incongruous works - Kafka's In the Penal Colony, Ondaatje's The English Patient

[Alina · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not as good as I was lead to believe. It was rather disappointing, which is a shame because it sounded like a really cool plot. But the pacing was difficult to follow, some parts felt forced, and other times I had trouble believing the plot. The plot itself felt a little all over the place, but it did have a few good political and social commentaries to chew on.