Fiction: That change is relentless and knowledge incomplete, is the abiding thesis of this timely fictional sequel by Jan Morris. The title, Hav, may spark a recognition: Morris the veteran travel writer produced Last Letters of Hav in 1985, an account of a visit to an imaginary city. It was unexpected, magical, steeped in history and instances of atmospheric connections and cross references.
Any return may be expected to bring with it revelations and hints of lamentation for what has been lost. This new work is shaped by discovery, little of which is pleasant, and contains many elements of regret.
In Last Letters, Hav emerged as an eccentric, self-contained city state, as cultured as Trieste, and a magnet for artists. Both European and Oriental, the city's personality reflects cultural influences including the Chinese and the Turks, the Russians and the French, and most enduringly of all, the Arabs.
In order to appreciate the new book, it is vital to recall the earlier work, which is included in this in this volume. In it, she arrives in Hav and makes her initial discoveries. Jan Morris is the traveller, a modern day Gulliver intent on watching and listening and reporting, but all very openly. She is not a spy, nor is she a celebrity author; although she is very obviously present in the narrative, she is a modern tourist intent on abiding by the rules, respecting the present against the vivid backdrop provided by history and a vast store of information which sits comfortably upon the conversational narrative.
Above all, she is never a know all, never world weary or affected. Morris remains open to each sight, each custom, every ritual. "I can hear the call to prayer only faintly in the mornings. Though it is electrically amplified, from the minaret of the mosque of Malik, the Grand Mosque in the Medina, it is not harshly distorted, as it is so often in Arab countries, but remains fragile and other-worldly; what is more it is not recorded, but really sung every morning by the muezzin who climbs the precipitous 11th-century staircase of the minaret. For me it is much the most beautiful sound in Hav: just as for my taste the Arab presence in this city remains the most haunting - more profound than the Russian flamboyance, more lasting than the hopes of New Hav, less aloof than the Chinese ambience, more subtle than the Turkish . . ."
It is a seductive, convincing narrative, begun in adventure, ended in flight, and all the more beguiling for being completely inventive. Last Letters From Hav, which was shortlisted for the 1985 Booker prize, is an entirely invented travelogue. This singular city state with its population of European émigrés from elsewhere and roll call of famous visitors never existed beyond Morris's imagination. When she reports, "It has been suggested that Hitler's probably apocryphal visit to Hav may have been sparked by Wagner's paradoxical fondness for the place. Paradoxical because there seems to me nothing remotely Wagnerian about Hav, and its summer discomforts (the composer's three stays were all in July) do not seem at all to his taste", the initial response is to ponder the certainty with which the information is delivered and then remind oneself, it never happened because Hav, this dazzling, charming and shabby city, is the culmination of a life time spent travelling.
The return is of course to a plainer, duller place. The residents are older, that is to be expected, but official dogma has undercut much of the old magic. While Last Letters From Hav is an allegorical travelogue, Hav is a cautionary tale written in the shadow cast by September 11th and the terrorist attacks on the US. Morris's intent is obvious but subtle. Change holds its own sadness. "There used to be only one steamboat a day to the island, but I guessed that things might have changed by now, and I was right. I left the car in a car park and walked down to the little dock. No steamboat lay gently hissing there, but a gleaming streamlined hydrofoil was reviving its engines." In an observation lies the confirmation that the Old World has been supplanted by the New.
Pace is another factor. In the first book, the narrator's stay spans six months. She enters into a society, settles and forms friendships. Stories abound, as do references to Marco Polo, Lawrence of Arabia, Diaghilev, Tolstoy, Mann and Freud. The sequel is very different. The atmosphere is no longer eccentric, multicultural, Hav is suppressed and has lost its individuality. This second visit, is merely that, six days spent in a haze of unease and tension. It is as if Morris no longer believes in the place for which her affection has been diminished by her second reception there. The contrasting time scales are significant and both books, interestingly, end in flight - the first is motivated by suggestion, the second for all its vagueness, is almost enforced.
Jan Morris is a good writer. It is as simple as that. Her prose conforms to the highest standards of precise clarity. Her descriptions are vivid, without ever becoming wordy or laboured. Among her several strengths is to write dialogue which reads as reported speech. Both of these novels are sustained by long passages of convincing dialogue. If the first reads as a vibrant portrait of a place inspired and informed by the combined culture, history and stories of the world, the second reads with all the terror of a prophecy fulfilled. As always with travel there is the element of quest. Morris also introduces a philosophical dimension.
It is no criticism to stress that in order to read and grasp the profundity of Hav, the earlier book must be read. Both are fuelled by curiosity and shaped by mood and tone shifts. It is as if Morris herself having had her imagination overwhelmed by an inspired account of a visit to her imagination, decided to make a return journey that would always prove a risk. In the epilogue to this new work, she refers to the first as a "hazy allegory", the second has all the weight of reality. The earlier confusions created by history have now been replaced by the fear of terrorism. Adventure has been replaced by dread.
Morris has written many books, she never claims to have all the answers and respects the unknown and unknowable, which might explain why she is the consummate student of cities. Her accounts have been deservedly praised. Somehow Last Letters From Hav for all its magic seemed to slip away, possibly because it drifted into a quiet conclusion. By writing Hav, the story has been given a more formal ending, a darkly ambivalent one, but for all that, an ending that resonates with the new terror stalking modern society.
Eileen Battersby is Literary Correspondent of The Irish Times
Hav By Jan Morris Faber, 301pp. £16.99
