I really enjoyed this book, although I was laughing at it initially. The book is divided into two parts. The first has three types of chapters that alternate: those that follow Howard's life, those that follow Lucy's life, and intercolary chapters about the history of Callimbia. In the second part, Howard (a palaeontologist) and Lucy (a travel writer) meet (and fall in love) when they are taken hostage on their way to Nairobi.

If you haven't heard of Callimbia, don't worry. Penelope Lively made it up. It's a small country tucked in between Egypt and Lybia. I was laughing at this book because in order to give Callimbia veracity, Lively calls upon historians and writers famous for being in Egypt to give accounts of the history of the Callimbia. When I first came across an except from Herodotus about the geography and people of Callimbia, I laughed out loud. It was not a pleasurable, oh this is funny, sort of laughter. It was a derisive, oh this is absurd, sort.

Then I got over it, because the characters are interesting and the subsequent excperts from Plutarch and Flaubert didn't bother me much. In fact, the one from Flaubert is great because it pokes fun at his penchant for whoring.

This is the second book I've read in short order about love during a hostage situation in a fictional or vague developing country (Bel Canto is the other). I think I enjoy this genre. I wonder if there are any other novels out there with this theme.

Here's a quote from the book about travel that I really enjoyed:

We do indeed live in global times, she thought. That is the problem. The globe has lost its mystery and its terrors. It no longer has oceans, deserts and forests, it is reduced to time zones, flight numbers and the logo of an airline. We are all travelers now. In the airport departure lounges she contemplated the boredom and the composure of those who circumnavigate the world today, in tracksuits and anoraks, slung about with electronic goods and cheap liquor, surprised by nothing, lords of the universe. It has come to this. Once upon a time a stranger was to be wondered at, questioned, attacked maybe, but never, for heaven's sake, accepted with indifference and a yawn. In the linguistic babel of arrivals and departures the itinerant hordes are barely aware of one another, moving between destinations as impervious as the baggage trundling around the carousel. Only language survives, and the cast of an eye, the color skin.