Let us Talk of Many Things; of Books and Queens and Pirates, of Mystery and Kings...: Tuesday Talk:My guest Jonathan Harries

Tuesday 24 August 2021

Tuesday Talk:My guest Jonathan Harries

where guests can have their say about...
anything they want

A slow descent into the maelstrom of

madness of history

How delightfully ironic I thought when I Googled the origin of the phrase “options lead to insanity” and only seven very manageable options popped up. The fewest of anything I’ve looked up on Google recently. None, by the way, mentioned the origin.

I’ve been using the phrase for years and years and always attributed it to some unknown Zen master because someone once mentioned that it sounded like an expression a Zen master might use. Of course, that kind of thinking falls into the trap of “just because someone says it doesn’t make it true,” which is the very thing I struggle with the most in my research.

My latest book, The Carpet Salesman from Baghdad, takes place in 1858, the year the great Indian uprising against the rule of the British East India Company ended. It was also the year the British East India Company was forced to end its rule of India. Which, too, carries a certain hint of irony because it means that technically the revolt which historians labeled unsuccessful ultimately turned out to be successful. Or would have been if India hadn’t had to exchange occupation by one colonial army for another: that of the British Crown.

I called it the great Indian uprising because fortunately today one has the option of reading about it from the Indian perspective and not just the British. Until recently if you’d looked it up in an encyclopedia or read an historical account, you would have seen it referred to as the Indian Mutiny. From the British perspective that’s exactly how it was seen: soldiers of the Bengal Army mutinying against their British commanders. Indian historians see it very differently—that of an oppressed country (even though technically India wasn’t one country at the time) revolting against the yoke of their imperialist overlords. In 2007 India celebrated the 150th anniversary of what it called the First War of Independence against British Rule. This, however, is refuted by some Sikhs who contend that the Anglo-Sikh War of 1845-1846 was the First War of Independence.

So, there you have it. Just because someone called it a mutiny doesn’t mean it was, and just because someone else calls it the First War of Independence doesn’t mean it is. You the viewer, the reader, the researcher, are faced with the option of whom to believe. Whose version of history is more accurate. And the more you search, the harder it becomes to separate facts from feelings. Options may not lead to insanity, but they will drive you nuts.

The protagonist in The Carpet Salesman of Baghdad—my ancestor, Elias Smulian-Hasson—is summoned from Baghdad to India by the fabulously wealthy merchant David Sassoon—acting on behalf of the Maharaja of Kutch—to assassinate a particularly nasty British officer whose brutal acts of retribution against the survivors of the uprising sickened even his own men. Elias, in the almost-two-thousand-year tradition of the family of assassins, does his best to retain a neutral position because he knows that “emotional attachment to either side has a detrimental effect on both planning and execution.” In reading his diary, I came to believe he found it impossible to do, and ultimately fell in love with India, its people and its food. Whether this emotional lapse resulted in him nearly getting killed in an ambush in the Mahakali Caves just outside of Bombay or forced him to battle his nemesis in the treasure-filled vault of the Sri Padmanabhaswamy temple in Thiruvananthapuram, you will have to determine.

The Carpet Salesman from Baghdad is a prequel to The Tailor of Riga – a family history of dubious veracity in which I first exposed the millennia-old history of my family’s business, which we affectionately refer to as “You pick them; we stick them” because of the curved dagger or sica that is the tool of our trade. Truth or fiction? I’m reasonably sure you’ll work that out.

I hope you enjoy the story, and please know that any proceeds from sales go to various animal and wildlife charities.

Many thanks

Jonathan

About the book:

What if my highly dubious story of a two-thousand-year-old family of assassins turned out to be true? Can you blame a chap for wanting to turn his otherwise humdrum family into a bunch of assassins?

It turns out you can.

I found this out soon after my novel The Tailor of Riga was published, and I received a bunch of beastly emails and threats from incensed family members horrified that I’d portrayed them as the descendants of bloodthirsty hitmen. Then, out of the blue, a package arrived from a long-lost cousin in Argentina that changed everything. It was the diary of an unknown ancestor, Elias Smulian-Hasson, summoned from Baghdad to Bombay by the enormously wealthy David Sassoon to take on an assignment for the Maharajah of Kutch.

His mission was to find and kill a British officer responsible for some of the most brutal acts of retribution against Indian survivors of the Great Sepoy Uprising and retrieve a fortune in stolen gemstones. Elias pursues his quarry from Bombay to the Kingdom of Travancore, where the contemptible swine is planning to rob the vaults of the richest temple in the world.

Priceless treasures, mysterious maharajahs, unspeakably evil villains, and the beautiful Mozelle Jacob, a woman Elias will pursue to the ends of the earth, all blend together like a spicy chicken vindaloo in the next saga of the sica...

About Jonathan:

Jonathan Harries began his career as a trainee copywriter at Foote, Cone & Belding in South Africa and ended it as Chairman of FCB Worldwide with a few stops in between.

After winning his first Cannes Lion award, he was offered a job at Grey Advertising in South Africa, where he worked as a copywriter and ended up as CEO at age 29, just before emigrating to the US. Like most immigrants in those days, he started once again from scratch. After a five year stint as Executive Creative Director of Hal Riney in Chicago, he was offered a senior position at FCB. Within ten years, he became the Global Chief Creative Officer and spent the next ten traveling to over 90 countries, racking up 8 million miles on American Airlines alone.

He began writing his first novel, Killing Harry Bones, in the last year of his career and transitioned into becoming a full-time author three years ago, just after retiring from FCB. He’s been writing ever since while doing occasional consulting work for old clients.

Jonathan has a great love of animals, and he and his wife try to go on safari every year. They’ve been lucky enough to visit game reserves in South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Tanzania, India, and Sri Lanka.