Sunny's bookshelf
Sunny's bookshelf photo by Judy Solomon

Online book reviews since 2011, the very best in reviewing – connecting good readers with equally good writers

Granada

Sign up to receive our latest reviews by email

Granada: A Pomegranate in the Hand of God

BUYER BEWARE: I have known Steven Nightingale for several decades and have read his books of sonnets and his two novels. I am an admirer of him, his writing, and Granada. Steven has a heap of passions: the Great Basin, the Sierra Nevada, poetry, ideas, conversations, his wife, his daughter, Granada, Andalusia, and the history of Spain. He doesn’t have space in this memoir-history-manifesto for all of his passions to be expressed, but he manages to include many of them. This book is often too hot to handle; it might spontaneously combust.

The premise of Granada is clear: he, his wife Lucy, and their toddler daughter Gabriella decide to live in Spain for an undetermined amount of time. On a scouting trip to southern Spain, they conclude in an instant that they will live in the medieval part of Granada, the Albayzin, reposed on a slope above the Darro River looking towards the Alhambra in the foreground and the Spanish Sierra Nevada in the distance. It’s a perpetually stunning vista. Some months later, they returned to live in Granada while remodeling a white stucco former convent with walled garden in the Albayzin. Quickly they became immersed in this place: its people, customs, culture, literature, philosophy, religions, and history. For the reader, what initially appears to be a travel memoir and love song to Granada expands dizzyingly into a multi-faceted exploration of the larger context of Al-Andalus (medieval Moslem Spain) of which Granada is a part.

Granada is structured as a lament for a destroyed civilization and an opportunity squandered, but this lyrically written book has a hopeful ending softening the author’s otherwise passionate sorrow and regret. For nearly eight centuries Granada and Al-Andalus gave us immortal contributions in art, architecture, philosophy, music, poetry, mysticism, math, science and medicine. During this long period the three religions “of the Book”—Jews, Christians, and Muslims—co-habited memorably but imperfectly, with sometimes malignant episodes, but with extraordinary cultural productivity. Then, about 1492 (an emblematic date), King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella unleashed the Reconquista and the Inquisition, precipitating nearly 500 years of calamity in nearly every dimension—culturally, religiously, economically, politically, and intellectually. Spain missed out on both the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions as it slid downhill from its pinnacle into a feckless abyss. It achieved a dismal inertia marked by the repressive, fascist dictatorship of Francisco Franco. It only has been since 1975 that Spain has begun to reclaim its pre-1492 glories and only since the mid-1990’s has Granada, the Albayzin, and the Alhambra come to be valued as preeminent cultural wonders.

As interesting as is the historical intersection of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (convivencia) in Medieval Spain, the charm of Nightingale’s Granada is the immense zest he brings to describing his and his family’s lives in Granada. This is not to diminish at all the immense amount of reading and research that went into the historical sections of this book. Nevertheless, it is clear that Granada connected with Nightingale’s personal taproot in some direct and transformative ways.

He begins Granada with an extended riff on the sensuous pomegranate and its manifold associations, past and present. (I will never think about pomegranates in quite the same way again.) Then he bridges into an equally romantic evocation of the domestic garden, carmen, found within the walled houses in the Albayzin. We learn that these carmenes are not meant to keep people out. Rather they are for “concentrating beauty” and promoting conversation.Then he breaks the bonds of centrifugal force and flies off into a long, poetic exegesis on the associations of gardens with antediluvian Mesopotamia, paradises, the Garden of Eden (“a sour narrative”) and the Greeks’ life-affirming Garden of the Hesperides. Nightingale applies similar methods to a delicious stew of other related topics. While he sometimes overwhelmed me, more often I was entertained and enchanted by the resulting ambrosia. – Neal Ferguson

Also available by Steven Nightingale: The Wings of What you Say; The Golden Pilgrimage; The Light in Them is Permanent; The Cinnamon Theologies; The Planetary Tambourine; Cartwheels; The Thirteenth Daughter of the Moon; The Lost Coast.

3 Responses

  1. Hi Neal,
    I had the pleasure of visiting Granada in May. I wish I had read this book before the trip. There is so much history that didn’t get addressed on our tour, nor did we have enough time to really explore. In Cordoba I got a really good tour guide and I did learn more there. Thank you for bringing this book to my attention. It made me feel like I was back in Spain again and it is a great overview of the history of Spain.
    Marj

    1. Thanks for the comment.Granada is a wonderful and inspiring city. I hope to return there one day and see at least one more glorious sunrise and sunset over the Alhambra.

Add your thoughts and comments...

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Share this Review
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn

Related Reviews

The Little Sister

The Little Sister

The Little Sister – A first Philip Marlowe novel brings this reviewer into an enthusiastic appreciation of Raymond Chandler who makes (for me) the mystery

Read More »
Facing The Mountain

Facing The Mountain

    Daniel James Brown’s Facing the Mountain, A True Story of Japanese American Heroes in World War II, is the rich telling of the plight faced

Read More »

About the Reviewer

Sign up for reviews by email

You’ll get email updates from Bookin’ with Sunny when we add a new review or blog post, and we never share your email with anyone else.

Shopping in-store Fun!

Support your local community’s economic growth by shopping for books at your independent bookstore in person, online at their website, or by phone.