The story is set in Afghanistan immediately following World War II. The protagonist, Mark Miller, is stationed in Kabul at the American embassy and is given the assignment of an investigation to find a young woman, Ellen Jasper, also from the United States, who has disappeared after her marriage to an Afghan national thirteen months previously.
During his journey through Afghanistan, Miller comes to a deeper understanding of the complexities and nuances of contemporary Afghan life. His travels also reveal the similarities of human nature across cultural and social boundaries.
Caravans is a 1978 Iranian-American film directed by James Fargo based on the novel by James A. Michener. Nancy Voyles Crawford wrote the screenplay. The movie was shot in Iran and starred Anthony Quinn, Jennifer O'Neill, and Michael Sarrazin.
Plot
The story is set in the fictional Middle Eastern country of Zadestan in 1948. Mark Miller is stationed at the U.S. Embassy in the fictional city of Kashkhan and is assigned to investigate the disappearance of and locate a young woman, Ellen Jasper, the daughter of a United States Senator, who vanished after her marriage to Colonel Nazrullah several months previously. Nazrullah is desperate to find her and becomes defensive when Miller asks about her. By law, Ellen has given up her rights as an American by becoming his wife. Miller traces her to a band of nomads who are running illegal guns. She doesn't want to leave, being estranged from both her parents and her husband. Miller doesn't want to return without proof she's alive and OK, which she refuses to give. Nazrullah lures the gun-runners into a trap. He separates Miller from the nomads and asks his wife to return to him but she refuses. Ellen at last gives Miller a note for her family. As the nomads leave, Nazrullah orders his troops to fire on them and Ellen is killed trying to rescue a child. A heart-broken Nazrullah carries away the body of his dead wife.
Caravans is an Al-Qadim set in which the eponymous caravan serves to move the characters (levels 5-9) across the High Desert in western Zakhara. If the player characters feed the Persian rug Ala'i the Hungry ancient poetry during the adventure, Ala'i gives them clues by blacking in parts of its weave. Other encounters include a talking tent, weird lightning on a high rock spire, broom-wielding copper automatons, giant roc skeletons, bug-eating centaurs, and an efreeti palace beneath the Pit of Ghuls.
Publication history
Caravans was written by Rick Swan, and includes a full-color 21" X 30" poster map.
Reception
Allen Varney reviewed Caravans for Dragon magazine #219 (July 1995). He comments: "Although caravan journeys have long made for romantic adventures, soap operas of the desert, this box actually deals little with caravans in themselves. Rather, its caravan serves as an excuse to move the characters [across the desert]. In missing this chance, the sourcebox reads like some old Spelljammer adventures where PCs travel through space to another world, then go on an ordinary dungeon adventure." Varney concludes his review by saying: "That said, I still like this set. Sure, the scenario is linear, and NPCs get some of the best lines, but just guess what's on the [...] map. Terrain maps, ship plans, a palace, a mosque? No, a rug! It's a beautiful Persian-style rug with a name, Ala'i the Hungry [...] I could talk about the rest of the neat stuff in this box [...] but admit it, the rug has already convinced you, right?"
A novel is a long narrative, normally in prose, which describes fictional characters and events, usually in the form of a sequential story.
The genre has also been described as possessing "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years". This view sees the novel's origins in Classical Greece and Rome, medieval, early modernromance, and the tradition of the novella. The latter, an Italian word used to describe short stories, supplied the present generic English term in the 18th century. Ian Watt, however, in The Rise of the Novel (1957) suggests that the novel first came into being in the early 18th century,
The romance is a closely related long prose narrative. Walter Scott defined it as "a fictitious narrative in prose or verse; the interest of which turns upon marvellous and uncommon incidents", whereas in the novel "the events are accommodated to the ordinary train of human events and the modern state of society". However, many romances, including the historical romances of Scott,Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights and Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, are also frequently called novels, and Scott describes romance as a "kindred term". Romance, as defined here, should not be confused with the genre fiction love romance or romance novel. Other European languages do not distinguish between romance and novel: "a novel is le roman, der Roman, il romanzo."
Moon of Israel is a novel by Rider Haggard, first published in 1918 by John Murray. The novel narrates the events of the Biblical Exodus from Egypt told from the perspective of a scribe named Ana.
Haggard dedicated his novel to Sir Gaston Maspero, a distinguished Egyptologist and director of Cairo Museum.
On this list we’ve got novels about ancient Greece, near-future North America and Cold War-era Cádiz, plus nonfiction peeks inside a woodshop, the mind of a Beatle and the making of a classic film ... A Novel By Julia Armfield Flatiron.
A metaphysical verse novel by Yankunytjatjara poet Ali Cobby Eckermann has won book of the year at the New South Wales premier’s literary awards ... she had $47 in the bank and was living in a caravan.
Two Sisters smells like teen spirit ... They look like a nice bunch ... Emma (JessHardwick) is a corporate lawyer who has returned to the Fife caravan park of her childhood holidays to write a novel ... View image in fullscreen ... Photograph. Jess Shurte ... .
11, fetching $69,000 for the novel she found in a bookshop's bargain bin 26 years ago ... The seller had been on a family caravan trip through the Scottish highlands when she discovered the J.K.
The title comes, of course, from George Orwell’s novel 1984. As the Vietnam War continued to rage, as the body bags kept up their grievous caravan home, as our ghettos burned, Wonder delivered a gut-punch with graphic lyrics.
That's good because it generates a cultural sharing of books which doesn\u2019t only celebrate people who have already become successful.\u201d The author of Paradise, a 1994 novel about a Tanzanian...
My recent favourites include Irmgard Keun’s and Jan Carson’s beautiful caravan-park novel .Gwen Allman, owner of independent Dublin bookshop The Company of Books, says that the ...
The Sun Chronicle
04 Nov 2023
The Sun Chronicle
04 Nov 2023