sutcliff_swap | Promote your favorite Sutcliff book(s)!

We're going to post the Sutcliff Swap rules and schedule, and open for sign-ups, Real Soon Now! But while you're waiting, why not squee about your favorite Sutcliff book in the comments here? This is your chance to remind others of that book they'd almost forgotten they'd loved, and inspire them to request or offer fanfiction or fanart for it. And if a book you haven't read sounds good to you, you can read it this summer and enjoy the fanworks created for it - and maybe you'll want to request it for Yuletide or Yuletart, or for next year's Sutcliff Swap. (Because this is going to be so much fun we will want to do it again!)

We're doing this on Dreamwidth only, so that we can use comment subject lines to identify the books we're talking about. If you don't have a Dreamwidth login, you can use OpenID or comment anonymously. ETA: anonymous commenting is now enabled! OpenID works too, which will email you comment replies. Please join in and promote your favorite Sutcliff books (this post has a list of all the books), and start thinking about what you might want to request and offer for the Sutcliff Swap!

Also, if you are intrigued by the descriptions of books you haven't read yet, you should be sure to join, not just watch, the community (at either site) so you can see locked posts. *cough*

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

To get out of the Celtic-Roman-Viking rut a bit (and now for something completely different)....

Blood and Sand is one of Sutcliff's adult novels, set in the 19th century Ottoman Empire. It's based on the true story of Thomas Keith, a Scottish soldier who converted to Islam and fought for the Ottomans. Here's the summary:

The Ottoman Empire (that "Sick Old Man of Europe"), is the setting of an aptly titled novel that examines the loyalty between men that helps makes warfare bearable. Thomas Keith, a Scottish soldier during the Napoleonic wars, is captured in 1807 in the Nile delta by Turkish forces under the Egyptian viceroy. With no reason to rejoin the English forces, he is persuaded to become an officer in the viceroy's army. Training for desert warfare, and witnessing the fellowship and piety of the Bedouin troops, he converts to Islam. During a long but unsuccessful campaign to free the holy cities of Mecca and Medina from forces hostile to the Turks, Thomas commands a troop of cavalry, marries a girl he has rescued and serves as amir (governor) of Medina, making a close friend of Tussun Bey, the viceroy's son. Loyalty and friendship are the strong thread on which Sutcliffe strings her stirring narrative--most of it based on historical fact. In this veteran British author's hands, what might have become merely a harsh tale of violence in the deserts of Arabia becomes a memorable, sensitively rendered story.

It is not exactly a happy book (based on true story, and so far I've yet to read a Sutcliff novel based on a true story that wasn't a tragedy), but it is ridiculously, almost over-the-top homoerotic. I originally bought this because of the superficial similarities to Lawrence of Arabia, my fandom at the time, and having read it, they're very superficial--Thomas isn't at all like Lawrence, and Tussun Bey is nothing like Ali--but it's just about as homoerotic. For example, right after they go naked swimming:

He was aware of an abrupt movement beside him and when he looked round the boy had come up to his elbow and was looking with concerned interest at the entry scar of the musket ball just below his, Thomas's, hip. It would fade and turn silvery by and by, but now it was still purplish and had the indefinable look of being tight and sore.

"That was at El Hamed?" Tussun said.

"Yes."

"Ssss," the boy sucked in his breath between his teeth. "It must have been a sharp hurt in its time."

"Sharp enough," Thomas agreed. "But I had a good surgeon. In a year it will be small enough--almost--to cover with the ball of my thumb."

Tussun put out a slim brown hand, and with the unselfconscious ease of old friendship [NOTE: THEY MET YESTERDAY], set his own thumb lightly over the puckered and livid place. "In a year, maybe," he said judicially, "assuredly there is a way to go yet."

More ridiculously homoerotic bits at my journal; includes a brief neutral mention by a character of pederasty.

Also, because this is an adult novel, everyone knows what sex is. Sometimes they even have it. There is a graphic description of circumcision which uh, kind of surprised me. And Thomas does eventually marry (his relationship with his wife is pretty interesting!). There are aspects of it regarding women and especially women's sexuality that kind of bothered me, but other aspects that didn't.

There are actually two stories in this fandom on AO3, which I think probably puts it #3? or at least tied? for most-written Sutcliff fandoms.

"Also, because this is an adult novel, everyone knows what sex is. Sometimes they even have it."

Well, that's a great selling point. A 19th century Osmanlı setting - this is probably the closest to contemporary that Sutcliff came? Judging by the period, it's probably the time of Mustafa IV or Mahmud II the Reformer (mostly the latter, I guess). After some googling, I'm wondering about him being called Aga: I thought until 1826 only yeniçeri and "top-managers" at court were called agas. (Like the eunuchs-in-charge at the Sultan's harem, that thing.) IS he one of the yeniçeri? (Originally they only admitted Christian boys in early teens, to be raised in islam & in absolute loyalty to the sultan... then again, it's the 19th century, maybe he could have been accepted by then, what with the general decline.)

Interesting!

Hmmm, I can't remember the details. Thomas and Tussan aren't called Agha, I don't think--that's a specific character, who was a top manager sort.

Annoyingly, I can't find much on the internet about the real Thomas Keith/Osman Effendi.

That's honestly the best summary I think I've ever read of this book - thank you so much. This one, I kind of grew into? I read it early, found it onfusing, and then read it again much later and very much enjoyed the complexity of the loyalties and the descriptions. I've often wondered how she came to write it.

... also to add very quietly and for the record that, to my knowledge, gloria_mundi (of AO3, above) wrote the very first Sutcliff fiction on the web: she wrote it about this book and posted on the long defunct and sadly missed Slash Cotillion website. That would have been... eh, pre 2002? Just saying. :)

I copied the plot summary from Amazon, for I am crap at plot summaries!

Yeah, it's kind of an odd book in the Sutcliff canon. I'm not sure I would actually have liked it, had I read it back in my LoA days when I bought it, right on top of EOT9 and TSC. I have sort of mixed feelings about it now, but it's definitely interesting.

... also to add very quietly and for the record that, to my knowledge, gloria_mundi (of AO3, above) wrote the very first Sutcliff fiction on the web: she wrote it about this book and posted on the long defunct and sadly missed Slash Cotillion website. That would have been... eh, pre 2002? Just saying. :)

Oh, cool! I didn't realize.

Promote your favorite Sutcliff book(s)!

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