Die Straße nach Isfahan

A historical novel

This is a book about Avicenna (11th century philopher and physician), known as the father of early modern medicine. It's a historical novel, translated from French, following Avicenna's life and journey. On the face of it, a very interesting topic. The beginning is VERY flowery. It does back off a bit (after the first few chapters), but continues.

For learners: The flowery language makes it more difficult to read and there are a lot of words and turns of phrase that are purposefully older / formal / foreign / religious, I guess to get that 11th c. middle eastern atmosphere across. So it's not good for language learners as you might not realise a lot of what's written isn't common use. It's not difficult if you're advanced enough to already know what is common use.

Even with fine comprehension, I find the flowery language annoying. It's a lot of work to read, much of it is boring and goes nowhere, much of the detail and human interactions don't feel authentic but more like a fantasy of what the author thinks the reader wants (especially, the sex scenes are terrible, how can I convey the awkwardness... here's a typical opener: zum dritten Mal leerte Ali sich im Bauch des Mädchens).

So to be blunt, the flowery old-fashioned writing loses track of the story, and it fails to touch on the details of this time period and location that I would have found genuinely interesting. I stopped halfway through.