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Over at the BBC web site, World News America anchor Matt Frei has just posted a bit of information which I found quite a novel surprise: a seven-hour cycle of plays titled “The Great Game: Afghanistan” is currently touring American cities.

This came as fascinating news to me because the history of The Great Game is a favorite subject of mine, mostly as a result of one of my favorite books in the world, The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia, by Peter Hopkirk.

I love all of Hopkirk’s books; his writing is detailed and informative, but also lively and crisp, never without a well-chosen anecdote or rye observation about the human follies inevitable in any historical study. I’ve probably read The Great Game five or six times over the years, and can highly recommend it.

In fact, while I’ve not seen the new stage production, I can say with certainty that any comments I make about Hopkirk’s book are going to be more enthusiastic than the introduction to Peter Marks’ review of the play: “Like Pilates, fiber and meditation, ‘The Great Game: Afghanistan’ is indisputably good for you.” I’m not going to discourage anyone from seeing these plays (after Marks’ comment, do I need to?) but I will note that The Great Game will cost you a good deal less and probably take no more of your time, never mind its other virtues.

Whether in the form of book or play, though, a study of the history of “The Great Game” and past empires’ efforts to tame Afghanistan is something that more Americans probably ought to spend some time on, even now, though a study of the region’s history nine years ago before we initiated a lengthy, bloody and expensive military occupation would have been even better.

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If anyone was curious about the minor promotional blitz accompanying this book some years back, but has not yet read it: for what it’s worth, I highly recommend doing so. At any rate, if you like The Lord of the Rings or, by chance, you’ve read and enjoyed some of the Norse sagas, you should go ahead and give this a read.

I got an impression at the time of its release that a few people were suspicious that The Children of Húrin was somehow not “legitimate,” but instead scraped together from notes as an attempt to milk a few more dollars out of the films. It is true that the basic story was published a quarter-century before, as a part of The Silmarillion. The last film adaptation was released in 2003, though, and the extended DVD was out within a year of that. For that matter, it was already obvious that the films were going to be a mega-blockbuster by the end of 2001. Thus, while I must imagine that the interest generated by the films played some role in convincing Tolkein’s Frenchified son to have one more go at a complete proper novel version that Túrin Turambar story which Dad never quite got into final form… if the book were simply a rushed-together cash-grab, I think they would have had it in stores before the excitement had been cooling off for three years.

In any event, having read it twice now, I believe the result is very much finished-quality work. It covers a longer sweep of years than The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings, in both of which the main action takes place in the course of just a bit more than one year. But the narrative of The Children of Húrin definitely takes the form of a novel, with real dialogue, rather than the encyclopedia-entry style of The Silmarillion.

Being part of the “elder days” legends of The Silmarillion, however, The Children of Húrin is certainly different in tone than Tolkein’s two best-known works. Neither of which is entirely a “happily-ever-after” fairy tale, either, but The Children of Húrin is grim. There’s not a single hobbit in this one and, as implied above, much of the story could fit quite well with the dark, stoic sagas of doom-shrouded Norse mythology.

If it somehow existed separatedly from Tolkein, The Children of Húrin would still be a good work but probably not especially significant, I admit. But as-is, I’m glad that the story was at last put together in this form, and it fairly earns a place on my shelf next to its sister novels.

And speaking of bad timing…

Y’know, I don’t believe in literal gods, but lately I’m starting to feel that, if God existed, he would seem to be a Republican. (Which is not that unthinkable, given the considerable if mixed evidence that if God existed he would also be something of a sadistic a-hole.)

I mean, could Democrats ever have something go right (as it were) even once, particularly in terms of the timing of things largely outside their control?

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