The Baghdad Railway was one of the great engineering projects of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The intention was to span the Ottoman Empire, linking Constantinople and Baghdad, and eventually to extend the line to the Persian Gulf at Basra. There was fierce international competition for the concession to build it, which was eventually awarded to Deutsche Bank, a circumstance that caused increasing unease among countries such as Britain, France and Russia.

The threat to commercial and political interests in the region posed by this great undertaking is of no great concern to John Somerville, an archeologist working in Mesopotamia in 1914. What worries him is that the new railway appears to be heading straight for the site he is excavating. Tell Erdek is a large mound that, at the beginning of this absorbing new novel by the Booker prize-winner Barry Unsworth, has proved a disappointment, yielding little of archeological significance. The discovery of apparently anomalous fragments, however, gradually makes it clear that Somerville has stumbled upon a significant find related to the fall of the Assyrian empire. He now has the chance to fulfil his childhood dreams, make his international reputation and win back the love and respect of his wife.

It is not only the remnants of great empires that make Mesopotamia a land of marvels. A pair of Swedish missionaries believe they have discovered the site of the Garden of Eden in the region, while Somerville's untrustworthy scout, Jehar, woos a girl by enumerating the (largely invented) splendours of a beautiful town on an islet in the Euphrates where they will settle after marrying. Then there are the area's rich oil deposits that catch fire and provide a fantastic light show in the night sky.

Somerville's dogged, scholarly digging into the past is contrasted with the activities of those more concerned with the future, with the building of empires rather than their long-ago decline. The ruthlessly pragmatic shipping magnate Lord Rampling dupes Somerville into believing that pressure will be brought to bear on the railway-builders to avoid Tell Erdek if he allows an ambitious young American geologist called Elliott to join his team in the guise of an archeologist. Elliott is in fact secretly prospecting for oil, supposedly on behalf of the British who need it to fuel the navy, and Rampling has no intention of keeping his part of the bargain: “Britain's survival as an imperial power was at stake; a railroad through a heap of antique rubble did not qualify for much regret in the scale of things.”

Amazing, isn't it?” Somerville's assistant, Palmer, observes while watching the various disputes among the local men hired to excavate the site. “A microcosm of our divided world. No wonder Europe is on the edge of war.” The group of disparate people who gather at Somerville's base, with their shifting allegiances and alliances, provides another microcosm of the international struggle that will shortly explode into the disaster of the first world war. Our reading of this historical story is further coloured by the fact that it tells of a struggle for oil and strategic power in a geographical area that is modern-day Iraq. Unsworth is, however, far too sophisticated and subtle a writer to allow his characters to be merely emblematic or his novel to become simply schematic. The leading characters may each represent a particular interest or system of belief, but they remain distinct individuals, shaped by their experiences and subject to changes of opinion.

Unsworth nimbly moves among them so that the perspective is constantly shifting. Since most of the characters are not what they seem, a change in viewpoint frequently undermines what we had previously been told. Their duplicity is usually more transparent than they imagine, and this gives the novel much of its dark comedy. Only Somerville, as his straying wife comes to realise, is “entirely himself”, and this is largely because he is pursuing his own goals rather than working as an agent for other masters. As another character observes, he is “a sensitive man, and it must be distressing to be living at a time when people like him, people trying to put things together, make sense of things, add to the sense of human community, are facing a contrary spirit of dismemberment and destructiveness that is terribly strong and pervasive”. It is no great surprise to discover, in the novel's near-apocalyptic ending, which spirit eventually prevails.

Unsworth has evidently done a great deal of historical, archeological and geological research, but this has been woven seamlessly into the fabric of the novel so that the reader is caught up in the excitement of Somerville's discoveries. Richly peopled, fast-moving, cleverly plotted, written with economy and elegance, this novel has the satisfying density and sweep of a book twice its length.

Land of Marvels by Barry Unsworth
Hutchinson £18.99 pp288

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