Sinking the Ark

by Tamim Ansary, Justin Donica (Illustrator)

Sinking the Ark tells the poignant story of a fictional “alternative” weekly in Portland, Oregon, the Rose City Ark, the newspaper of the city's counterculture. In 1974, the paper embarks on a bold to dispense with all hierarchy and embrace pure no more managing editor, no more assigned roles, no more under the new plan, every person will decide for themselves how to contribute to the paper. All important decisions will be made by everybody sitting down together and reaching consensus collectively . Can it work? Can the people of the Ark really put an issue on the stands once a week, every week, operating by these rules? Well, thereby hangs the tale. The novel follows the intertwining stories of six characters who find that romance, jealousy, sexual politics, personal quirks, and ideological impurities are just a few of the demons blocking the path to the perfect future. This is a coming-of-age novel set in a time between ages, an era historians have an era when the din of “the sixties” has faded away, but the roar of the “Reagan Revolution” has yet to sound. The Digital Age is just around the corner, but no one can see around corners; at the Rose City Ark , even the headlines are pressed out by hand, artisan-style. What Sval, Marica, Zoe, Martha, Raoul, and George are bracing for is the epic global collapse of industrial civilization, after which “the world will be right back to tribal.” In that hallowed future, they--the fortunate few who saw the apocalypse coming--will be the ones building the new and better world that will rise from the rubble of the old. That new and better world is, of course, nowhere to be seen today; but modern readers may well recognize the spirit of the Rose City Six and their friends as a feature of human life that is born anew with each new generation that enters its twenties.

401 pages, Paperback

Published September 26, 2022

About the author

Mir Tamim Ansary is an Afghan-American author and public speaker. Ansary gained prominence in 2001 after he penned a widely circulated e-mail that denounced the Taliban but warned of the dangers of a military intervention by the United States. The e-mail was a response to a call to bomb Afghanistan "into the Stone Age." His book West of Kabul, East of New York published shortly after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, is a literary memoir recounting his bicultural perspective on contemporary world conflicts. Ansary writes about Islam, Afghanistan, and history. His book Destiny Disrupted retells the history of the world through Islamic eyes. His new book The Invention of Yesterday explores the role of narrative as a force in world history Ansary directed the San Francisco Writers Workshop for 22 years.

Reviews

[Rick · Rating 5 out of 5]

“I’ve just read a very entertaining and informative novel entitled SINKING THE ARK, by noted Afghan-American author Tamim Ansary. He has made a career of writing his observations about cultural differences intertwined with ancient-to-modern history, and WEST OF KABUL, EAST OF NEW YORK is a great place to start. But in this novel he’s merged his non-fiction skills with that of somewhat traditional fiction, to create a compelling blend of storytelling that puts the reader on the ground running, real-time, in the midst of the early 1970s. ARK features free love entanglements, artists developing then-new means of expression (performance art, “location art”––(an “aquarium apartment,” for instance), questioning authority while involving themselves in a One-World Family approach to running a business enterprise.
In a community newspaper like The Ark, the collaboration of writers and designers must collectively reach the goal of publication each week, while receiving little or no pay, and only their potential for enlightment can help this group of ragtag Pacific Northwest personalities to co-exist. Everything revolves around psychic struggles with themselves and others; can they just get along in a land that time forgot, pulling production all-nighters, setting type, proof reading with blurry eyes?  Even though ARK takes place in 1974, it still has that 1960s feel––young people searching for their identity.  We get to know the on-and-off ARK members––Sval, Zoe, Marcia, Martha, George, Raoul, others––and roll with the punches as they try to present important topics (renter’s rights, prison reform, sexual identity) to the Portland readership, while battling new and self-appointed managers who try to manipulate what gets published.  The ARK narrative leads us to experience all sides of that post-Kennedy decade. Through the multi-level characters that Ansary has fashioned we see ourselves, see others, feel the times (the pain, the confusion, the love…), to learn how people can work together (or not).
What Ansary has accomplished in other books, explaining how and why cultures have developed in certain ways, migrated from continent to continent over thousands of years to survive (see his THE INVENTION OF YESTERDAY), he’s now done for this small tribe of wannabe journalists these fifty years past. His superb skills at fleshing out these living, breathing historical characters, sneaking us into their hearts and minds, helps us to examine our own interactions, especially with fellow humans who vie for control. How does the world actually work, via all our differences? He’s nailed the counter-cultural dance, and his brilliant riffs on reality in that time-frame shower us with insights that are in rare supply.” 
––Rick Schmidt, author, FEATURE FILMMAKING AT USED-CAR PRICES, EXTREME DV, SLEEPER TRILOGY––Three Undiscovered First Features 1973-1983, 25+ indie features (Morgan’s Cake, etc.)

[Olga Zilberbourg · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a joyful ride from the first to the last page. A story of a collectively run newspaper that took its start in the 1960s and that, in current form, aspires to change the world by changing the governance structure. Can a vote-based committee successful produce a weekly newspaper, telling important local stories and surviving on circulation and ads? When all the staff is volunteer-based and part-time, experimenting with drugs and alternative life style? The novel is told in alternating points of view of the six key players in this newspaper business, whose lives become inter-meshed personally as well as professionally. The book touches on all the socially progressive topics that we're still struggling today -- from the prison industrial complex, to the real estate woes of the inner cities and gentrification, to the gap between the ideas and the practice of feminisim, contemporary masculinity, and nonmonogamy. The ending was so well done -- unexpected yet thoroughly prepared and deeply satisfying. A total delight!

[Anon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Entertaining send-up of the counter culture in the 1970's. It focuses on six characters trying to run an alternative newsweekly in Portland, OR. Plenty of drugs, free love, and anarchist politics, with the inevitable complications. Ansary manages to be both satirical and sympathetic to his characters at the same time. Could the world have ever been that simple and idealistic?