Marshlands: A Novel
*Starred Review* Readers familiar with Sir Wilfred Thesiger’s classic travel narrative The Marsh Arabs (1964) will eventually recognize the protagonist of Olshan’s novel as a fictionalized modern version of Thesiger, the military doctor and adventurer who sloughed off his Britishness in favor of a tribal life amid the Arabs of northern Iraq, whose trust he patiently earned through his skill in performing circumcisions. The connection is not immediately obvious. When we first meet Gus, as he is called here, he is a broken and disfigured man, all but unrecognizable after many years in (presumably American) captivity following the occupation of his adopted homeland and the draining of the marshes that housed his people. As the story unfolds in reverse, we come to understand the circumstances that led to his imprisonment, and his complicated relationship with the violent marshmen to whom he has devoted his life. Although it is easy and appropriate to take this novel as stark commentary on U.S. involvement in Iraq, its most powerful moments explore a much deeper and more abstract ambivalence about tribalism and its allure. --Brendan Driscoll