Rating: 
Summary: Brilliant mix of travelogue, biography and history
Review: The narrative weaves between Ghosh's account of a year spent living in modern-day Egypt; and the second storyline, his reconstruction of the fascinating life of a medieval Jewish Arab merchant who travelled to India, married a local woman and settled there. If those sound like distant and obscure tales, it's a tribute to Ghosh's prose that he makes the reader quite attached to both yarns, and keeps you wondering how they will turn out. Great stuff!
Rating:
Summary: A new look at the middle ages
Review: This book is quite unique as it blends a travel account with the analysis of the history that covers the area from the Middle East to India. Ghosh, an accomplished scholar in social anthropology, provides a personalized view of the subject. Trading in the middle ages had many socio political implications and had many human tragedies. Indeed, slave trading can be seen as the worst form of human tragedy that we can imagine today. But in those days people of different religions and background profited from it. Ghosh also provides a very readable history of the study of history, how the documents and information related to these periods were discovered. He has been very successful in holding the reader's attention. The book is worth reading.
Rating:
Summary: Incredible
Review: This is a must read book. Ghosh somehow weaves together the history of Cairo, a traveling Jewish merchant, marginalization, the fate of 2nd world countries, and a diary of his time in Egypt-- and makes it really, lively, and relavant to anyone's life. and it is written in a lovely, lyrical style
Rating:
Summary: Dramatic search for History
Review: This is a _very_ challenging and rewarding book. The interweaving of ancient and contemporary history summons the reader's skills of comparison and interpolation. Ghosh knew exactly when to switch time-frames in order to contrast regional attitudes then and now. Especially interesting is the revelation of ancient slavery: it was not at all the brutal forced-labor familiar to American history; in this case it was more like the adoption of a foster son.
Highly recommended to those interested in an unusual slant on Moslem or Jewish culture.
Rating:
Summary: Incredible
Review: This is one of the most outstanding books I have ever read. Ghosh's narrative is both textured and thorough, and he communicates masterfully the relationships between periods and people separated by hundreds of years.
Rating: 
Summary: a good read
Review: what makes 'in a unique land' truly unique itself is the persepctive of the main character: how often do we get to read about the perceptions of a non-european/american traveler on a journey in a country that is not in europe or america? it is a rare vision to see through the eyes of an indian graduate student taken to egypt to research for his doctoral thesis. the whole basis of the novel is so utterly original, making it interesting to anybody who is fascinated by reading about intercultural experiences. as an american living abroad, i have come across many great books about british travelers surviving south america or spain, and americans making it through africa and australia, but i had never before had the opportunity to know what a person from one part of the 'underdeveloped' world might have to say about another such country. surprisingly, the results were not too different: many of the protagonist's trials and tribulations reminded me of my own travels in another north african country, so my personal reading of the novel showed me how much we all share in common when going abroad, no matter what country we are from, yet obviously his experience was quite different in many ways as well. i truly enjoyed reading this novel.
Rating: 
Summary: a perspective rarely seen
Review: what makes 'in a unique land' truly unique itself is the persepctive of the main character: how often do we get to read about the perceptions of a non-european/american traveler on a journey in a country that is not in europe or america? it is a rare vision to see through the eyes of an indian graduate student taken to egypt to research for his doctoral thesis. the whole basis of the novel is so utterly original, making it interesting to anybody who is fascinated by reading about intercultural experiences. as an american living abroad, i have come across many great books about british travelers surviving south america or spain, and americans making it through africa and australia, but i had never before had the opportunity to know what a person from one part of the 'underdeveloped' world might have to say about another such country. surprisingly, the results were not too different: many of the protagonist's trials and tribulations reminded me of my own travels in another north african country, so my personal reading of the novel showed me how much we all share in common when going abroad, no matter what country we are from, yet obviously his experience was quite different in many ways as well. i truly enjoyed reading this novel.
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