Quite by coincidence I find myself sitting down to write a review of Mary Doria Russell’s new book, Dreamers of the Day, on the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq - quite coincidentally but extremely appropriately, because if I have understood this novel correctly part of what Russell is doing is asking her readers to consider to what extent we in the West are culpable in relation to the spreading conflict in which we now find ourselves engaged.

Although the story begins in Ohio in the period just after the ending of the Great War, the main action takes place in Cairo in 1921, at the time of the Peace Conference that in effect re-drew the map of the Middle East, creating new national boundaries that took no account at all of the history and culture of the peoples involved.  Agnes Shanklin has travelled to Egypt after the death of her family in the influenza pandemics of 1918 and 1919.  Following in the footsteps of her younger sister Lillie, who has lived in the area before the war, she finds herself taken up by a student whom Lillie and her husband had befriended, then simply Neddy Lawrence, now better known as Lawrence of Arabia and a key player, along with Churchill and Gertrude Bell in the on-going negotiations.  Agnes is a good listener, moreover, she has always been the one in the family who asked not ‘what’ but ‘why’ and as a consequence she is able to provide those more deeply involved in the proceedings with an intelligent and questioning perspective on events.  This aptitude is also recognised by a German staying in the same hotel as Agnes, Karl Weilbacher, undoubtedly a spy gathering as much information about the Conference as he can, but nevertheless, a good friend to Agnes, someone who helps her grow in an understanding of who she is and what she is capable of.

For, in many respects, Agnes and her history offer a personal parallel to what is happening in Cairo.  Agnes has given her life to meeting the expectations of her domineering mother, a mother who, as Karl points out, has acted like a tyrant.

If your home has a beautiful view of a forest on someone else’s land, you may enjoy the view, but you have no right to it.  It does not belong to you.  If one day the owner decides to cut down all his trees for lumber, you may be disappointed, but you are not harmed.  It is his, not yours, to dispose off as he wishes.  Your mother acted as though your lives were hers.  When your plan differed from hers. she lost a view of the future that she imagined but had no right to.

The implication, it seems to me, is that in dividing the Middle East into colonial possessions instead of following Woodrow Wilson’s call for an end to all colonialism the leaders of Western Europe are acting just like Mumma; they are trying to ensure a future that they have imagined but to which they have no right.  And the inevitable outcome is that just as Agnes has finally rebelled, so also will those peoples who are colonised against their will and against their cultural, emotional and spiritual identities.  However, no warning, no prophecy of trouble ahead will stop the politicians, they have their visions and they will bring them to fruition, they are what Lawrence describes as the dreamers of the day and they are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible regardless of what the consequences might be.  And we are now living with those consequences.  As Agnes says at the novel’s outset, [m]y little story has become your history.

But, the novel doesn’t end without hope.  While Agnes looking back from the present day suggests that perhaps the best thing to do with dreamers of the day is wait until they sleep again and then shoot them in the head, others remind her of different dreamers, of Martin Luther King, of Gandhi and of Mandela.  How then, the question is, do we encourage this sort of dreamer rather than the other, the dreamer who sees a world in which all are equal, all are free and acts upon that dream to make it possible.  To find and understand Russell’s answer you need to have read the whole book, but those of you who know me will appreciate why I am not going to argue with a prescription that begins [r]ead to children.

For me, Russell’s earlier novel The Sparrow was a revelation, partly because of the time in my life when I encountered it, but mostly because it is a stunningly good book.  I don’t think that Dreamers of the Day is as good.  It’s not as complex for one thing.  But, it is still the best novel I’ve read so far this year and in terms of the significance of what it has to say to the current generation of readers vitally important, especially as our little story is the next generation’s history and the legacy we are currently engaged in creating is not one we should be leaving to anyone.