Hav

“Hav” by Jan Morris is a brilliant, imaginative travel-fiction cum allegory about culture and change in the modern world. Morris, already a renowned historian and travel writer, creates the fictional city of Hav on the Eastern Mediterranean. This edition from the NY Review of Books consists of two novels: “Last Letters from Hav” (1985) and “Hav of the Myrmidons” (2005) that take place in Hav, a fictional city-state somewhere in the Mediterranean. The city is a polyglot mix of cultures, languages and sensibilities.

The first novel is more of a conventional travel narrative detailing Morris’ six months stay in Hav. Hav is a strange mixture of many influences, from Arabic, Greek, French, Italian, German, Russian. It even has a large Chinese community that came in the 1500s. The Crusaders were there and it is rumored that it is the last bastion of the Cathars. It may have been founded by the Greeks descended from Achilles or it may have been founded by ancient Celtic peoples who had wandered their way down to the Mediterranean. Hav is everywhere but nowhere. Unique yet instantly recognizable as a Levantine city with all its complexes and colors. Morris has a great eye for detail and puts these elements together into a combustible mix with much life but with something dark waiting in the shadows. One of the fun aspects of the first novel is that Morris sprinkles her narratives with quotes from famous visitors to Hav such as Marco Polo, Sigmund Freud, T.E. Laurence, etc… She describes the unique features of Hav society such as the Armenian who has played a trumpet voluntary on the ramparts of the crusader castle every morning, the dangerous but exciting Roof Race, the rare Snow Raspberries brought down by the Kretevs—the hill peoples—in the Spring, the incongruous Chinese pagoda on the coast, among many others, the large dog statue at the mouth of the harbor covered in graffiti of all the people who have come over the centuries. The first novel ends abruptly as Hav is invaded by foreign warships and the author flees over the mountains.

The second novel changes tone and Hav – now called the Myrmidonic Republic of Hav – has changed beyond recognition. After the “Intervention,” a Cathar theocracy takes control and Hav has now become a wealthy place. As Old Hav is an allegory of a twentieth century world, Myrmidonic Hav is a biting allegory of the twenty-first century world. Most of the old world is gone and what is left or been allowed to be preserved is commercialized. The Roof-Race is a now a sanitized global sports events hoping to get into the Olympics. The Chinese Pagoda has burnt to the ground but its ruins have been allowed by the new powers to remain as a reminder of the Old Hav. Snow Raspberries have now been genetically modified and produced in large quantities to be shipped all over the world. The graffiti on the dog statue has been removed. The trumpeter was killed during the Intervention but his memory has been preserved in a museum and the music has been preserved in a mechanical carillon given to Hav by the Chinese. At the center of the Republic is a large glad tower with a giant glowing ‘M’ with no discernible purpose.

The ancient symbol of Hav was a maze. And both Old and New Hav are mazes of different sorts. If the earlier Hav is a confusion of cultures and tones, the new Hav is a sanitized but opaque world where confusions are hidden behind attempts to create narrative. The most profound lesson for me came during the authors return to the Greek island of San Spyridon in the second novel. The Greeks here, far from being down-trodden like they were in the first novel, are buoyant and proud of their heritage. The new powers in Hav have crafted a new history of the city that emphasizes its Greek heritage. The New Hav has taken the various strands that informed the Old Hav and refashioned them into a simple, linear narrative that tries to reconcile irreconcilable parts of Hav’s identity and discarding the one’s that do not work. The Greeks are happy because they are now central to the simplified story. Their lives now have coherence but that coherence is a false creation of the present.

As you might be able to tell, I enjoyed this work greatly. I highly recommend it for its imagination, its beautiful details, and its trenchant allegorical rendering of the modern world. It is quite unlike anything you will read and I promise it will make you think long after you finish it.