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Steven Pressfield’s Gates of Fire Is Badass Historical Fiction

From Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield:

For myself, I confess the horror of it  nearly overcame me. Though I had loaded up double with two packed quivers, twenty-four ironheads, the demands of fire had come so fierce and furious that I was down to nothing before I could spit. I was firing between the helmets of warriors, point-blank into the faces and throats of the foe. This was not archery, it was slaughter. I was pulling ironheads from the bowels of still-living men to reload and replenish my spent stock. The ash of a shaft drawn across my bow hand slipped from its notch, slimy with gore and tissue; warheads dripped blood before they were even fired. Overwhelmed by horror, my eyes clamped shut of their own will; I had to tear at my face with both hands to drive them open. Had I gone mad?

Wow, Gates of Fire rules. This is an awesome piece of historical fiction that retells the Battle of Thermopylae in 280 B.C. through the voice of the captive Xeones, a Spartan Helot, and recorded by the Persian historian, Gobartes, to King Xerxes. Pressfield does an amazing job of portraying the Spartans military valor and really gets deep into the warriors’ mindset. This is a really powerful book and I love the way the story is told. In between the ‘recorded words’ of Xeones are brief interludes from the Persian historian, who comes to care for their captured foe in the course of hearing his story. It’s interesting to me that Pressfield is also the man who wrote The Legend of Bagger Vance. Anyway, if you are interested at all in the Spartans, I suggest you toss your 300 DVD into the garbage and go read this. Not that I don’t love 300, actually it’s pretty sweet, but this book gets so deep it tugs at the heartstrings. Oh, and the battles are pretty nuts too. It rocks. Go get it now.

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Glory

From Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts:

And Nazeer raised his assault rifle, and fired as he ran, and I saw Mahmoud Melbaaf firing ahead of me, on my right, where Suleiman had been, and I raised my weapon, and pulled the trigger.

There was a horrible,  blood-freezing scream somewhere very close. I suddenly recognized it as my own, but I couldn’t stop it. And I looked at the men, the brave and beautiful men beside me, running into the guns, and God help me for thinking it, and God forgive me for saying it, but it was glorious, it was glorious, if glory is a magnificent and raptured exaltation. It was what love would be like, if love was a sin. It was what music would be, if music could kill you. And I climbed a prison wall with every running step.

I just finished Shantaram yesterday and I must say, it is easily my favorite novel. This book is an amazing piece of autobiographical fiction. In an interview with CNN Talk Asia, Roberts mentions that all the events are real but the characters are imagined, leaving us with a psuedo-true story piece of literary genius. Roberts’ story is fascinating. After his marriage broke down and he lost custody of his daughter, Roberts turned to heroin, and committed a series of robberies with an imitation pistol, eventually leading to a 19-year conviction in Australia’s maximum-security Pentridge Prison. He escaped to become one of Australia’s most wanted men and spent ten years as a fugitive in Bombay where he established a free health clinic while living in the slum, became involved with the Bombay mafia, working as a counterfeiter, smuggler, gunrunner, and street soldier, and went to war in Afghanistan to fight with the mujahedin.

Eventually, Roberts was recaptured and served out his sentence and finished Shantaram, of which the first two drafts (600 pages of work) were destroyed in prison.

With Shantaram, Roberts uses elements of his life to craft a thrilling novel about love, life, adventure, friendship, betrayal, exile and freedom. You might think that reading this 933-page book would be a daunting task, but the book is beautifully written and its pages go by all too fast. Read this book.

Gregory David Roberts is a pretty serious badass. I recommending watching the whole CNN Talk Asia interview.