Tell Them of Battles, Kings, and Elephants by Mathias Enard (2017) is set in May 1506 in Constantinople, now known as Istanbul in Turkey.
Michelangelo Buonarroti – the Michelangelo – a young sculptor from Rome arrives in Constantinople in 1506. The Sultan of Constantinople, Bayezid the Second, has called him to the city to design a bridge over the Golden Horn. The Sultan had just rejected the design of another sculptor – Leonardo da Vinci – and has high hopes for Michelangelo’s design since he has been touted as a promising, upcoming sculptor.
The Sultan has provided Michelangelo with a large sum of money, a translator, and a studio in the ‘outbuildings of the former palace of the sultans; a stone’s throw from a grandiose mosque whose construction has just been completed.’ The Sultan has also promised Michelangelo immortality – everyone will know the name of Michelangelo forever.
Michelangelo looks at da Vinci’s rejected design. Why was it rejected? He thinks it is ingenious – ‘so innovative that it is frightening.’ But it is devoid of anything interesting.
Michelangelo knows that this will be an epic assignment. He settles into his small room and begins to learn as much as possible about Constantinople and the Ottoman Empire. In his notebook, he draws sketches – but not of bridges. He learns about the city, the streets, its music and arts, textiles, food and spices, its poetry, religion, and its people.
He begins to plan his work. Readers learn about his knowledge of arches, glyphs, recesses, vaults, pillars, and the like. Construction of the bridge commences. Then, in 1509, an earthquake hits Istanbul.
Tell Them of Battles, Kings, and Elephants is based upon actual historical documents in a brief, but interesting account of Michelangelo’s arrival in Constantinople.
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MARTINA NICOLLS
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MARTINA NICOLLS is an international human rights-based consultant in education, healing and wellbeing, peace and stabilization, foreign aid audits and evaluations, and the author of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009). She lives in Paris.
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