From Publishers Weekly
Ah, the happy days of the 1990s, when Americans could travel abroad fearing only natural disasters and imperfect plumbing. This rollicking first novel brings readers to some unusual locales—post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan, an Apache reservation, earthquake-shattered Istanbul—to tell the story of Jeff Hartig, a young man who travels the world but can’t leave behind his own shortcomings. After an unhappy time running a teen center in the Apache town of Red Cliff, Ariz., recent college graduate Jeff hitches up with the Peace Corps, landing at an even more remote destination—the Kyrgyz village of Kyzyl Adyr-Kirovka, deep in the steppes of Central Asia. The village’s one asset is a defunct cheese factory funded by government subsidies, run by the ebullient, generous Anarbek Tashtanaliev, who takes it upon himself to help Jeff experience the overwhelming wonders of Kyrgyz hospitality. Anarbek also has a beautiful, English-speaking daughter named Nazira, who understands more clearly than her fellow villagers how little one American visitor can accomplish for them. Ashamed of his own ineffectualness, Jeff flees Kyrgyzstan, leaving behind one lasting impression—a pregnant Nazira. He next alights in Istanbul, where he settles once again into expatriate life, until Anarbek, Nazira and his young Apache friend Adam appear, asking Jeff to make good on all his promises of assistance. Then the 1999 earthquake hits, in a harrowing sequence that envelops the entire mismatched group and plunges Istanbul straight back into the uncivilized world. Rosenberg’s ability to illustrate these oddball settings—based on his own time in the Peace Corps and elsewhere—is pitch perfect, a vibrant mix of the serious and the absurd. With Jeff, he puts a brilliant new spin on a compelling type: the Well-Meaning American.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From Booklist
The lives of four people from vastly different backgrounds cross in an antic tale, which starts in Arizona and ends in Istanbul. Jeff, the gormless but likable linchpin of the story, travels from a disastrous job on a Native American reservation in the U.S. to a fruitless spell as a Peace Corps volunteer teaching English to factory workers in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan. In his travels, Jeff forges connections with an Apache youth and a Kirgiz family. Major characters are strongly depicted, although Jeff's lack of motivation remains a mystery. The basic bleakness of a book set in regions of poverty and hardship is leavened with humor rooted in cultural differences and the misunderstandings that arise from them. Plot and characterization build through the first three sections--set in Arizona and Kyrgyzstan--but fall apart in the last section, set in Istanbul during the destruction of the 1999 earthquake. Despite the overly melodramatic and pat ending, Rosenberg's modern picaresque tour is a well-written, engaging, and promising debut. Ellen Loughran
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


The Miami Herald, June 13, 2004
[An] ambitious and enchanting debut novel that sings...Filled with knowing, deadpan humor...[a] generous, perceptive vision.


Review
Rollicking...pitch perfect...a vibrant mix of the serious and the absurd.


Los Angeles Times Book Review, July 11, 2004
"...often hilarious...a brave adventure into the heart of a new world...sparkling."


Library Journal, starred review 4/1/04, chosen as an LJ Best Debut (10/1/04)
"So how does first novelist Rosenberg manage to pull it off so beautifully?... A wonderful work; highly recommended."


The Miami Herald, June 13, 2004x
"[An] ambitious and enchanting debut novel that sings...Filled with knowing, deadpan humor...[a] generous, perceptive vision."


The Christian Science Monitor, June 15, 2004
"...what a generous, big-hearted book this is...a gentle rousing by someone who understands the complicated rewards of caring."


Christopher Buckley in The New York Times Book Review, June 6, 2004
"...his descriptions are so well-rendered...journalistic, humane and heart-wrenching. Rosenberg makes the reader care for his characters."


Christopher Buckley in The New York Times Book Review, June 6, 2004
his descriptions are so well-rendered...journalistic, humane and heart-wrenching. Rosenberg makes the reader care for his characters.


The Christian Science Monitor, June 15, 2004
what a generous, big-hearted book this is...a gentle rousing by someone who understands the complicated rewards of caring.


Carlin Romano in the Philadelphia Inquirer, August 22, 2004
The deft achievement of This Is Not Civilization grows out of his surehanded grasp of [the] global status game.


Book Description
With captivating insight, realism, and humor, this stunning debut novel tells the parallel stories of two native villages, each facing cultural extinction. It's the end of the twentieth century, and in the towering mountains of post-Soviet Central Asia, Anarbek Tashtanaliev is single-handedly providing for his small village in the face of a collapsed economy. But the cheese factory he manages no longer produces any cheese, and his favorite daughter has been stolen in an ancient nomadic courting ritual. When he is ruthlessly blackmailed, Anarbek finds himself at a crossroads between the traditional past and the uncertain future. He stands to lose everything he loves. Half a world away, in the high canyons of Arizona, Adam Dale is a young Apache basketball star and the future hope of his tribe. He struggles to keep his family together amid the pressures of reservation poverty and the corrupt rule of his increasingly bull-headed father, the tribal councilman. Anarbek and Adam seek out the one person they think will be the solution to all their problems: a peripatetic American aid worker who'd once volunteered in both of their villages. Now working as a refugee resettlement officer in Istanbul, Jeff Hartig must suddenly play host to first one, then both of these men from his past. Soon, Anarbek's disgraced daughter joins them and the unlikely foursome find themselves sharing an apartment in the magical, sprawling city. Equally fascinated and perplexed by one another, they discover hope, then friendship, then love, unaware that they will soon face one of the most disastrous earthquakes of the century. Yet it is only in traveling so far, and surviving so much, that each person realizes his or her own capacity to endure. Sweeping, compassionate, and deeply moving, this novel celebrates the power of human connection in a largely unsettled world. Robert Rosenberg is an original and important new voice in contemporary fiction.


From the Inside Flap
Gripping...exotic and intimate. Every line rings with authenticity, every moment breathes with love and life and heartache. A beautiful, resonant book. - Brady Udall, author of The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint This novel should do for us what The Quiet American did for an earlier generation -- put into perspective Americans' well-meaning but arrogant involvement in the affairs of very different cultures. Beware: you're likely to stay up all night to finish it. --Phyllis Rose, author of Parallel Lives For the past twenty years, returned Peace Corps volunteers--Paul Theroux, Norman Rush, Maria Thomas, Richard Wiley et al--have won just about every major literary award in the country, and Robert Rosenberg seems destined to be a member of this distinguished group of writers. This Is Not Civilization is a wonderful first novel, full of the marvelous compressions and juxtapositions and clashes that have indeed made the world a very small place. --Bob Shacochis, winner of the National Book Award This Is Not Civilization is a remarkable novel that illuminates the most important struggle of our times: to find a self and to find kindredness in a world where our shared humanity is often lost to the claims of our superficial differences. Robert Rosenberg has written not only a wonderfully readable work of fiction but also an important one. --Robert Olen Butler, winner of the Pulitzer Prize Beautiful...Rosenberg should be thanked for his insights into Middle Eastern culture at a time when understanding of that troubled region is essential. --James Alan McPherson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize So how does first novelist Rosenberg manage to pull it off so beautifully?... A wonderful work; highly recommended. -- Library Journal, (starred review)


About the Author
Robert Rosenberg served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in newly independent Kyrgyzstan. Afterward, he received a Peace Corps Fellowship to teach in a village on the White Mountain Apache Reservation in Arizona. In 1999 he took a teaching job in Istanbul, arriving there five days before the massive earthquake. He is a graduate of Columbia University, and the Iowa Writer's Workshop, where he was awarded a Maytag Fellowship and a Teaching/Writing Fellowship. He currently lives in Arizona.


Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
1The idea of using porn films to encourage the dairy cows to breed was a poor one. Anarbek Tashtanaliev, the manager of the cheese factory, had been inspired by a Moscow news broadcast. From Russia the television signal crossed the Kazakh steppes, was beamed to Bishkek, the Kyrgyz capital, and then relayed up and over the Tien Shan range and into desolate pockets of the new nation. If the Central Asian weather was favorable, the forgotten village of Kyzyl Adyr–Kirovka received the world news. As a result, one Wednesday Anarbek discovered that the Chinese had successfully used taped videos of fornicating bears to coax pandas to breed. The possibility of increased productivity based on a regimen of bovine erotica seemed promising. And the scheme had the single merit of all brilliant ideas: it was obvious. Anarbek purchased dated Soviet video equipment across the Kazakh border in the Djambul bazaar. He kept factory workers on a twenty-four-hour watch to record, on tape, the next time the bulls went at it. But the workers had no luck that fall. In the spring he sent his employees up the shepherd hill next to the reservoir with an order to film copulating sheep. Thirty days later they had recorded over four and a half hours of tape. The following summer they projected this film each night, in color, onto the factory walls, for the enjoyment of the cows. The animals were indifferent to the lusty films, and the scheme cost the failing cheese factory a month"s wages. By the end of the winter only eleven Ala Tau cows and two bony Aleatinsky bulls remained. Production had ceased. Anarbek managed the only collective in the mountain village. During the lean years of glasnost and perestroika, and the optimistic but still lean years of independence, Anarbek had watched his veterinarian pack up for Russia, the feed shipments dwindle, the wormwood climb the concrete walls, the electricity fail, the plate coolers rust, the cows die, and his workers use their lunch hour to hawk carrots and cabbage in the village bazaar. The cheese factory no longer produced cheese. Yet every week in the factory"s old sauna, raising a glass of vodka, wearing only a towel wrapped around his bulging stomach, Anarbek told his friends, "We"re still making a profit." He was well aware it was false money. Amid the collapse of Communism, in the extended bureaucratic mess of privatization, the new government continued to support the state-owned collective. A sudden change in the village name had caused the oversight. With a burst of post-independence pride, an official had decreed Soviet Kirovka henceforth be called by its Kyrgyz name, Kyzyl Adyr. Now nobody knew what to call it (Kyzyl Adyr? Kirovka? Kyzyl Adyr–Kirovka? Kirovka–Kyzyl Adyr?). The capital could not keep up with such details. The village appeared by different names on scattered government lists, and the factory had yet to be privatized. The machinery had stopped, but the Communist salaries kept coming. Kyzyl Adyr–Kirovka was a cosmopolitan village isolated in the mountains of northwestern Kyrgyzstan. Anarbek"s neighbors were mostly fair-skinned Kyrgyz, but also included Russians desperate to repatriate, and Kurds, and Uzbeks, and the Koreans whose grandparents Stalin had exiled to Central Asia. Everyone benefited from the government oversight. For Anarbek was generous; he knew the money was neither rightfully his nor the factory"s, so he kept on his original thirteen workers, whose families depended on their continuing salaries. The employees showed up at the factory each morning, sat, chatted, and drank endless cups of chai. Everyone in the village understood that the cows were barren and dying and that the cheese factory produced no cheese. But what good would come of reporting it? Money that did not find its way out of Bishkek would sink into the pockets of the minister of finance, an official rumored to drive a Mercedes-Benz at excessive speed through the streets of the capital, weaving between potholes, honking at donkey carts, trying to run over the poor. A Mercedes- Benz! While the people of Kyzyl Adyr–Kirovka suffered! For the village, money mistakenly sent from the capital was money they deserved. Anarbek, after all, was a modern, educated Soviet man— he had studied management one summer in Moscow—and the village had confidence he could still turn things around. On a Wednesday evening, in the heat of the factory sauna, he defended his fertility scheme to six of his neighbors and coworkers. The men nodded in complicit agreement. Only Dushen, the assistant manager of the cheese factory and a man too practical for his own good, broke the spell with a question grounded in reality: "Maybe the quality of projection was bad?" The men clicked their tongues and shook their wet heads; two of them leaned over and spit onto the hot stones. The spit sizzled into thin wisps of steam. Anarbek sighed. Independence should have been a time of optimism, yet it seemed that brave ideas for improvement were consistently ruined by such complications. Radish, the head doctor of the village hospital, opened the sauna door, and a stiff gust of air, fresh as a cool river, flowed into the room. Entering, the doctor banged the door behind him, turned his bare jellylike chest around, and announced, "News, my friends! News! The minister of education, from Talas, came by this morning." "That son of a bitch," said Bulut, the town"s appointed mayor, its akim. "Screw the whole lot of them," said Dushen. "Send them back to Moscow," Anarbek said. "Who needs them!" He and his friends continued abusing government officials until Radish yelled over them. "Listen. A word! A word! He has offered the village an American." "An American?" the men exclaimed in chorus, and burst into laughter. "An organization called Korpus Mira." The glint in the doctor"s eyes quieted Anarbek. "The government of Kyrgyzstan has ordered thirty Americans. They"ll distribute them across the country. To hospitals. Schools. Factories like yours." "What do they want from us?" Anarbek asked. "How much do we have to pay them?" Dushen demanded. "This is the thing," Radish explained. "They don"t want any money. It"s a humanitarian organization." The words humanitarian organization, pronounced in Radish"s halting Russian, sounded like fancy foreign machinery. Nobody in the village had ever used words like those before. "American spies!" yelled the town akim. "Thieves," said Dushen. "They"ll take us over." The men shook their heads in doubt, but Anarbek was intrigued. He mused on the inconceivable idea of America—of William Clinton and his friend Al Gore, of the war in the Persian Gulf, of Steven Seagal breaking necks, of the busty Madonna who sang "Like a Virgin"—this America, their new provider. He stepped down to the rack of hot coals, grabbed a cup of water, and, using the tips of his fingers, splashed the rocks over and over until they hissed. A wave of steam swirled into a choking cloud and raised the temperature in the cramped room. The men stepped down to the lower wooden benches. Bent over, covered in sweat, they rubbed their legs and shoulders, and two of them moaned pleasurably, "Ahy, ahy, ahy," at the heat. In the center of the floor Anarbek crouched on his haunches next to Radish. "Did you accept this American?" "I cannot accept," the doctor explained, snapping his undershorts. "We, our village—all of us must demonstrate our willingness to receive this gift." "Maybe," joked Dushen, "she will be a beautiful long-legged blonde." He too squatted on the tar-stained floorboards and hawked a gob of mucus between the wooden beams. "Like Sharon Stone." "There"s a thought," said the akim. "Or maybe it will be some wealthy man who will marry one of our daughters and take her to America." "Owa!" the men agreed, and some of them repeated, "America." Radish said, "They want you to find a place to house the American. When she gets here, she will work at the factory, teaching us English. Think! The economic journals. Communication with businessmen. From any country. From around the world. New machinery you can order. New products." He was waving his arms and turning from man to man. "This World Health Organization sends the hospital a new piece for the x-ray, and we cannot even attach it. The instructions on those damn things come in English!" Anarbek leaned forward into the steam and belched. "I will find a house for the American." The head doctor smiled at his offer and nodded twice. "But that"s not all," he added. "We must appoint one of us in town to be the Kyrgyz host family. They will—in a way—adopt her." One by one the men lifted their chins, and the eyes of each, in turn, settled on Anarbek. This was his factory, this was his sauna, they were his guests; they were yielding to his decision. He stood up. "I will be the father of the American," he said, and patted his wet, hairy chest. The ripples of fat absorbed the blow in a slapping sound, a note of confidence. "An American," someone mumbled. The men leaned back, and for the first time any of them could remember, there was silence in the sauna, deep and pure. For two minutes nobody moved. Stomachs rose and fell in the thinning steam. Dushen spoke up. "Who could have imagined?" "The world is changing," Anarbek said, thinking of his dying cows, of faulty video equipment, and of fornicating pandas in China.The next evening, in the shaded courtyard of his home—.anked by two long buildings, the tea bed, the stone wall, and the high steel fence—Anarbek fanned the flames of his grill, waiting for Lola. The coals had reached the perfect temperature for the shashlyk: the ashes gleamed red when he waved the sheet of cardboard at them. "Lola!" he shouted. "Lola, they"re ready!" He could not get used to her delays. In twenty-one years of marriage, Baiooz, his first wife, had mastered the art of anticipating his every need. She had always been a step ahead of him. How many times had he asked her to do something, and she had told him, with her feline smile, that it had already been done? Anarbek fanned the coals again, this time more violently, then stopped and swallowed. He still could not believe Baiooz was dead. "Lola!" It was true what his friends said: no good can come from a beautiful woman. He dropped the cardboard, lifted his heavy frame from a low squat, and stomped toward the kitchen door. Just as he opened his mouth, Lola appeared in the doorway, carrying the silver tray of marinated mutton cubes, speared on metal skewers and covered in slivers of onions. "Where were you?" "I was slicing more tomatoes," Lola said. "I thought they were not enough for you. I know how much you eat." He looked at her face, her fresh soft lips: twenty-two years old, less than half his age. An Indian scarf he had bought her covered her dark hair. In the mornings she tied her hair up into a ball and covered it, like this, but at night she brushed it out in long straight strokes. She was tall, as tall as he was, and her lithe body seemed capable of great athleticism. She always smelled of exotic fruit— her shampoo, her soap, perhaps. He hardly knew her. "The grill"s ready. The coals are red. We have to cook now, before we lose the heat." She answered him with her haughty silence but brought the tray of skewers over to the tea bed. Their floppy-eared mutt, Sharyk, rose from his guard position next to the gate and scuttled toward the meat. Lola bent and smacked him on the behind. "Git!" The dog sprawled out, his head between his paws. "Make sure he doesn"t eat these," she warned. Even in warning her voice was soft, so much softer than Baiooz"s had been. But he missed his first wife"s flutter of activity—her noise, her endless haranguing, her stubbornness. Lola listened to everything he said, did everything he demanded. What kind of wife was that? He placed the first six skewers on the grill, one by one, reminding himself how well Lola took care of Baktigul, his younger daughter. That was the important thing. And he was lucky to have a wife so soon. He leaned over the grill and closed his eyes in the smoke, shaking his head. As hard as he tried, six months into the marriage he could not reconcile this life with the last. Lola was his older daughter"s best friend. She and Nazira had grown up together. Anarbek could remember the two girls at Nazira"s eight-year name-day celebration. The family had picnicked on kielbasa and melons near the Kirovka River, cooling the fruit in the glacial water. He remembered one May Day festival when he had bought them both ice cream and had paid the village photographer to take their picture in the square by the statue of Lenin. They still had that photo: the two girls in flowery cotton dresses, ice cream running down their arms, Lenin"s hand extended above them saluting the mountains. Anarbek remembered a later summer, when he had worked at the Kara Boora region"s Young Pioneer Camp, in the foothills halfway to Talas. He had taught the girls how to ride horses. Nazira had climbed on readily, but Lola, at that time so short, so timid, could not get onto her horse. He had helped her, lifting her from behind, and she felt no heavier than a housecat. He opened his eyes and turned the shashlyk. When Baiooz had died last year, just after independence, the village mourned with him. But how long could a man with an eightyear- old daughter manage alone without a wife? By October a feverish search began for someone to replace her. With the news of her mother"s death Nazira returned from university in Naryn and took over the management of the house, displaying a maturity and expertise beyond her twenty years. She looked after Baktigul and did much to console Anarbek, but he had remained unsettled. He felt an urgency to give his daughter her own life. She must marry soon enough; she could not take care of them forever. Six months after Baiooz"s death, Nazira herself had proposed the solution: Anarbek should marry her oldest friend. Lola was twenty-one and had never left Kyzyl Adyr–Kirovka; she was waiting to become a wife and mother. In an emotional plea, Nazira convinced Lola. They were almost related anyway, and what could be better than marrying the wealthiest man in the village? When Nazira informed Anarbek that Lola was willing, he was shocked. He could hardly tolerate his own daughter playing his matchmaker. He refused and, two weeks later, refused again more forcefully. By November, though, his loneliness, combined with Lola"s youthful beauty and Nazira"s stubborn insistence, changed his mind. "Why don"t you steal her?" Nazira had asked playfully. He had considered. Once their nomadic ancestors—the ancient Kyrgyz horsemen—had rampaged villages and stolen women. If the bride spent a night in a captor"s yurt, she belonged to him and could not return to her home. After the fall of Communism and with the rise of Kyrgyz nationalism, the tradition of wife stealing was resurfacing. "But those are old traditions," he had finally told his daughter. "We"re a modern nation now. We did away with those ideas seventy years ago." "It"s not a silly tradition," argued Nazira. "It"s our heritage. Many people are doing it. Also, Ata, it"s romantic." So Anarbek had followed his daughter"s advice. One wintry afternoon he spotted Lola walking back from the bazaar, carrying two kilograms of potatoes in a plastic sack. He pulled up to her in his tan Lada and cut the loud engine. She wore a long brown skirt that hugged her slim waist and a striped polyester blouse that showed off her broad shoulders. Without a word he grabbed her elbow and pulled her into the back seat of the car. She struggled. It occurred to him to let her go, but he reminded himself she was supposed to fight, that this was a sign of her honor. Before he slammed the door, he heard her gasp. His heart sank. But when he climbed into the front seat, he was uplifted by her muffled giggles, by the way she folded her arms across her chest and stared with calm resignation out the window. He promised himself he would treat her well. He brought her back along the dirt road, half a kilometer, to the house, avoiding the potholes hidden in the mud, driving as slowly as possible, as if the young woman were a delicate tea set he might break with a bump. At home he led her to the bedroom, where Nazira had prepared a meal of manti, a bottle of champagne, and the silk platok. Lola wore the scarf and spent the night. From then on she belonged to Anarbek: his captured virgin bride, his prize, his consolation. He offered her family a two-thousand-dollar kalym—his ten-year savings—more than enough to uphold his reputation in the village. Anarbek had nearly burned the last round of skewered shashlyk. His dog sniffed at his side and cried two plaintive notes. The smell of the grilling meat swirled around the courtyard, over the fence, and up above the village, where it mixed with the evening scent of burning dung and alpine poppies. Anarbek lifted the skewers, examined both sides, and held them close to his face, savoring the smell and color of the mutton. He realized Lola had not brought the bottle of vinegar and pepper, and he roared for her once again. Before she appeared, he turned, and there, on the tea bed, next to the plate of onions, the vinegar was already waiting for him. He laughed at himself. "What do you need?" Lola asked from the doorway. "Come, it"s time to eat. Get Baktigul." "Shouldn"t we wait for Nazira?" "The shashlyk"s ready. Get Baktigul." He tossed two burnt cubes of meat to the dog, who gulped them down in a single swallow and wagged his tail. Lola fetched his daughter from the street. Baktigul appeared with her ponytails swinging, a young friend in tow. The four of them sat cross-legged on the platform, tore off pieces of Lola"s fresh flatbread, and alternated bites with chunks of mutton, onions, and grilled tomatoes. Here, Anarbek assured himself, was the picture of a contented household. The man feeds his family, the wife prepares delicious bread, the daughter comes to eat with her little friend, honoring the house with a guest. Elusive happiness lay in such simplicity. Life would take care of him; it would take care of them all. He watched his young daughter tear with her teeth through a strand of sinew, and he lifted his chest with pride. But before they had finished dinner, the two girls at the table cried out and gave startled jumps. Nazira, his older daughter, burst through the gate and slammed it shut behind her. The metal clanged. Nazira"s chest was heaving, and her hair, usually straight and shining, was a tangled, dusty mess. On her face—the face of his first wife—dirt stains shadowed the bright red flush of exertion. Her skirt was torn. She stumbled two steps into the courtyard, the dog bounded to meet her, but then she collapsed to a crouch, her head bent. Anarbek dropped his skewer of meat, but Lola was already up and off the bed, running to her old friend. "Nazira," she whispered. "Come in. Come, sit. Nazira, dear." Lola kissed her forehead, but Nazira"s shoulders arched in spasms as she wept. In two steps Anarbek was standing over her and lifting her by the shoulder. With Lola"s help he walked her to the tea bed. Baktigul gasped again. "Don"t cry, Nazira," she said. Anarbek handed each of the young girls another skewer of meat and ordered them to play in the street. "What"s wrong with Nazira?" Baktigul demanded. "Quiet now," he said. "Leave us for a little. I"ll come and find you in a few minutes." He started to tell Lola to bring some chai, but she had already returned with it, and was pouring. "Drink, Nazira," he said. "Be still, kizim. You"re okay, aren"t you?" Lola rubbed Nazira"s neck, and they sat in silence for a few moments while Nazira composed herself. Her sobs abated, then rose and fell again. She pulled her hair behind her ears. Lola wet a cloth under the samovar and wiped the dirt from Nazira"s cheeks. "I was returning for lunch this morning, after classes," Nazira began, and then broke into tears again. She taught English at the Lenin School. She was a steadfast teacher; it hardly bothered her that the students immediately forgot what she taught them, or that they were the sons and daughters of shepherds and would never have use for a foreign language. Nazira was famous around the village for her lovely voice, and her English classes eagerly followed her in daily song: "May There Always Be Sunshine" or "I Can Clap My Hands, Thank You!" She collected her breath. "I was walking just past the flour store. A car pulled up. There were three men inside. Big men. I have never seen them before, Ata. They ran out of the vehicle and grabbed my arms. There was nobody around to help. They got me into their car." She fought back another round of tears and nearly gagged. Anarbek waited for her to compose herself. When he could no longer wait, he tried to soothe her with a soft question, but instead his words rushed out in uncontrollable anger. "Where! Where did they take you?" Over her sobs Nazira explained that they had driven all the way to Talas. In a concrete microregion, in a dark, cold apartment, they forced her into a bedroom. There the mother of one of the men brought her bread and strawberry jam, which she refused to eat, and tea, which she refused to drink. The woman even opened a bottle of vodka, poured two glasses, and raised a toast. "To my beautiful new daughter. My son could not have found a wife more worthy." The mother had then reached over and tried to wrap a beige platok around her head. Nazira fought her off, ripped the scarf from the lady"s hands, crumpled it, and tossed it into the corner of the room. In a soft voice the mother tried to assuage her fears. "It"s an honor, my daughter. You were so pretty; you were the one he chose." She showed her cracked photographs of the family that would be hers: her new brothers and sisters, an aging wrinkled grandmother, her mustached father. "They all had the eyes of a wolf, every one of them," Nazira explained. "The entire family held one single expression: a sneer." She told the woman she would never be her son"s bride, no matter what tradition dictated. After that she refused to speak. The mother grew angrier, drank the vodka alone. For a half-hour she raged at Nazira"s silence and rained abuses on her. "Finally she lifted herself from the floor. I wouldn"t look her in the eyes. I was staring at the bottom of her dress. She called me the worst kind of donkey. "Aren"t you ashamed?" she said. "Aren"t you a real Kyrgyz woman?" She slapped me here, across the face. When she left, I thought I was free. But it was only starting." The dark room filled with women: relatives, friends, neighbors, and young girls all brought in to console her. They urged her not to revolt too much. "Don"t deny your destiny," one old woman said. "You should accept it. You should try to find joy in it." Another said, "It happened to me too. You may not love him now, but you will learn to love him." One of the sisters urged her, "You are here already. You have crossed the threshold of this house. If you leave, you will never find another husband. Don"t shame yourself." Nazira asked only one question: "Atam kaida?" Where is my father? She knew they had to bring him to negotiate. "Write him your letter. We will bring him here to name your price." And she understood: writing the customary letter would be an admission of complicity. She was trapped. She tried to steady herself, but the tears rose. As the ladies stood to leave, the mother leaned toward her and in a voice as harsh as the breaking of glass, quoted the old saying, "A woman who comes crying into her future husband"s house will lead a happy life." The room had emptied. Nazira took in a long breath, but then the man entered. He was the largest of the three who had pulled her into the car, and he was dressed in the formal clothes he had worn for the abduction: a gray wool sweater, pressed gray slacks. He had combed his brown hair so it reached across his forehead in waves and had doused himself in barbershop witch hazel. The smell choked Nazira each time he leaned close, and in that sealed space it made it hard for her to breathe. The man sat directly across from her on a purple and red tushuk and poured two overflowing glasses of vodka. He told her how he had seen her three weeks before, when she had brought a class into Talas for the middle-school English Olympiad. He spoke with a husky voice, full of confidence and menace, even more frightening when he lowered it to a whisper. He said, "You were walking across the street from School Four, and I had every intention of stealing you then. I would have, but I did not know what to do about your students. Instead I stopped one of your boys from the fourth form. I asked him your name, where you were from. The boy told me all about you, and he asked if I loved you. He must have seen it in my eyes. Even a fourth-form boy! I told your student, "You see that mountain? The tallest one? I think she is more beautiful than that mountain."" He rambled on like this for an hour, professing his love. "Nonsense," Nazira explained. "He was talking complete nonsense." "Okay now," Lola whispered. "Go on," Anarbek demanded. He said his name was Traktorbek, and that he had been named after his grandfather, who had been named after the tractor (a machine of wonder the Russians had brought to Kyrgyzstan in 1948). He told her how he had given up school to sell meat in the bazaar. He told her how many men he had beaten up in the past year. He told her how much cognac he could drink in one sitting, how women who came to buy his mutton fell in love with him and he gave them discounts. He had not planned to marry so young, he said. He had wanted to make his fortune first, then find an apartment in the capital—he had been there once—where he had dreams of opening a gas station. But he had seen Nazira, and his plans had changed. All the time he spoke, he was drinking. Nazira hardly listened. She asked herself how she was going to escape, and if it were possible, and if she did, what people would say about her. Traktorbek then squatted beside her and pulled over two thick mats. Before she knew what was happening, he grabbed her face with his callused palms. He was kissing her, pushing her down. Anarbek listened now with pain. He looked up through the rustling leaves of the courtyard at the darkening sky and then back down. He fingered a piece of meat, lifted it to his mouth, then threw it onto his plate. His wife looked away. Neither could face Nazira. "I kicked him so hard between his legs that he shouted," she said. "I"ve never heard a man yell so loud." She laughed at the memory, but the laugh brought on a fresh round of tears. "Then he hurt me," she murmured. Her head sank. "After, I pushed my way out of the room, through the mother and the father. All the other people were there, as if it were some kind of holiday mayram. There was music, and they were clapping and dancing in the sitting room. They were calling my name and saying the worst kinds of things. But I grabbed a pair of shoes at the door, and I"ve never run so fast. I asked my legs to carry me like the wind. I was barefoot, and I ran out of the microregion and into the park by the Ferris wheel, across from the cinema. I hid behind the memorial statue and put on the shoes. They weren"t mine. They were the mother"s high heels! Too small for me. I stumbled to Prospect Chui—but look at me!—I must have looked sick. No cars would stop. I was afraid to stay on the main road. I went off to the stadium and hiked five kilometers along the river, through the Talas forest, all the way to the otovakzal. A truck was parked between the buses, and the driver was heading past the village. I begged him to take me home." Anarbek sucked in a deep breath, astonished at her courage. "You were stolen. You were stolen and you ran away." He was trying to assess the extent of the damage—what, in these times, her escape actually meant. He unfolded his legs and refolded them. In his chest a rough pride swelled at his daughter"s hardheadedness, but then a sharp dread pierced his stomach. Lola had misunderstood him. "How can you say such a thing?" she burst out. "Look at her. Think of what she has been through." "Soon the village will know," he said. "The bad tongue will begin. This man, he was not the kind you could have married?" Both women stared at him with open mouths. He was trying to think practically. If Baiooz had been here, she would have known what to say, what to do for their daughter. Now he imagined the excuses he would have to give in the sauna, the rumors that would consume the town, the impossibility of Nazira"s finding a husband. He knew by custom that he was not supposed to accept his stolen daughter back into his home—it was his duty not to. She had crossed the threshold, and now she was spoiled. Still, they lived in a modern world; these traditions hardly mattered anymore. He stared at the table. He could eat nothing else. For minutes they sat in silence and swirled their cups of chai. Above the courtyard the branches of the plum tree swayed. Shouts flew over the high fence, sounds of the children playing on the street. A sudden pounding on the metal gate—too rough to be Baktigul —startled them. Nazira half stood, then glanced at him, panic in her eyes. Anarbek raised himself off the tea bed. He strode to the gate and behind him heard Lola say they should go inside. The metal hinges creaked with a high-pitched screech, like the call of a buzzard. Framed in the light blue gateway was the very picture of shattered youth. The young man had thin piercing eyes, and his wavy hair was disheveled. But he was wide-backed and powerful, with a wrestler"s build so thick, his shoulders stretched the sleeves of his striped gray sweater. He did not bother with the customary formalities: no salamatsizbih, no asalaam aleikum, no ishter kondai. "Where is she?" he demanded, and staggered forward. Anarbek"s ingrained sense of hospitality told him a visitor must be invited into the home, seated comfortably, offered bread and tea, and fed a meal before he was questioned. Now, for the first time in his life, he stopped a stranger at the door. He stretched a tremulous arm to block the entrance. "You are not welcome in this home," he said. The impropriety disturbed him. He was certain no good would come of breaking tradition. Yet Nazira must not see the man again. "I know she has come here," Traktorbek said. "The children told me." He pointed down the dirt lane where his Lada was parked. Next to it Baktigul and her friends were gathered in a circle, chattering around a boy on a fallen bicycle. "Nazira is here. This is her home. What would you like?" "I would see her, agai." "It seems you have already seen her. She would not see you." Traktorbek searched past him into the courtyard. Anarbek shifted to his left, and from pale desperation the youth"s face turned to red anger. The muscles in his neck flexed, and he stared up into Anarbek"s eyes, only then comprehending his entrance was blocked. For a long moment they stood face to face. "It is your obligation to return her to me. Your duty, and your family"s duty. You know the ways." "These are old ways, Traktorbek." The young man started at the sound of his own name. He collected himself with new energy and glared, his eyes calculating. Nazira had been right: the face—the eyes—held the menacing sneer of a wolf. "Do you know anything about honor?" he demanded. "Do you think of your family"s name? Do you think of your factory"s name?" His choppy voice grew louder, and Anarbek could smell the vodka on it. "I will see her. I have made my decision. She will come back with me. She has spoken with my mother. Arrangements have been made." "Arrangements will be forgotten." Anarbek fought to keep his voice calm. Like this young man he too was prone to passion. He knew how quickly, how often, he lost control of himself. But passion would not quiet passion. He was guarding his home from an invading presence, but the invasion felt larger and more pervasive than this simple lovesick youth standing before him. "I do not have to tell you again," Anarbek said. "You must leave her alone now. She will not be your wife. She"s made it clear. She will not have it." "She! She is a woman!" "I will not have it either. I have other plans for Nazira." The word America flashed like lightning across Anarbek"s mind. He had no idea where it came from. Quickly he refocused. Traktorbek"s body had stiffened. "You are obligated, yet you won"t give me back your daughter." He clenched and shook his fists. He reminded Anarbek of the costs of this decision, of the shame he was bringing on himself, and ended with a volley of grave threats, vowing revenge. To his own surprise Anarbek remained calm. "Leave now," he said, stepping back from the gate and pulling the door. The young man clutched the swinging metal with his fingertips and cried out, "If you shut this gate on me, you can"t know what it means to be in love!" The outpouring drew an unexpected feeling from Anarbek. He nearly liked the boy for it. He respected the fervor of youth, its steely nerve, its determined siege before a closing gate. How men suffer in the name of women! Yet this Traktorbek was too young, too brash. He refused to face reality, and Anarbek could not approve of the animal violence he exuded. He would never have done for a husband; Anarbek could see that now. "Son," he said, "you don"t know what it means to be a father." He pulled the gate harder, and the final image of rejected youth was trans.gured into complete despair. Traktorbek"s fingers slipped from the door. The gate clicked, and in a single massive blow the full force of the young man"s body crashed outside, rattling the metal. Anarbek stood still. He waited for the slow shuffling of feet, the quieting of the children, and the angry growl of the car engine. In the kitchen Lola and Nazira were seated on low stools. His wife was kneading dough for tomorrow"s leposhka on the flat wooden table. As he entered, both women straightened up and watched him, unblinking. From the sink, rinsing his hands, he glanced back at his daughter. Conjuring the image of his dead wife, he prayed inwardly, "Baiooz, tell me I have done what is right." He turned and reached for a towel. Their faces were set, awaiting his decision. "You"ll come with us tomorrow," he said into the sink, drying his hands. "Two days from now the Korpus Mira inspects the house I"ve found for the American. We must beat out the rugs and hang the curtains."Copyright © 2004 by Robert Rosenberg. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"This novel tells the parallel stories of two native villages, each facing cultural extinction. It's the end of the twentieth century, and in the towering mountains of post-Soviet Central Asia, Anarbek Tashtanaliev is single-handedly providing for his small village in the face of a collapsed economy. But the cheese factory he manages no longer produces any cheese, and his favorite daughter has been stolen in an ancient nomadic courting ritual. He finds himself at a crossroads between the traditional past and the uncertain future." "Half a world away, in the high canyons of Arizona, Adam Dale is a young Apache basketball star and the future hope of his tribe. He struggles to keep his family together amid the pressures of reservation poverty and the corrupt rule of his increasingly bull-headed father, the tribal councilman." Anarbek and Adam seek out the one person they think will be the solution to all their problems: a peripatetic American aid worker who'd volunteered in their villages. Now a refugee resettlement officer in Istanbul, Jeff Hartig must suddenly play host to first one, then both of these men from his past. Soon, Anarbek's disgraced daughter joins them, and the unlikely foursome find themselves sharing an apartment. Fascinated and perplexed by one another, they discover hope, then friendship, then love, unaware that they will soon face one of the most disastrous earthquakes of the century. Yet it is only in traveling so far, and surviving so much, that each person realizes the strength to endure.

FROM THE CRITICS

John Coyne - editor, Peacecorpswriters.org

"Though most Peace Corps books are interesting, and some well written, few are literature. Nevertheless, every ten years or so a Peace Corps novel comes along that transcends our experience, transcends the ordinary 'Peace Corps story.' I can think of a handful of truly first rate books of fiction about our experience... And now we have Robert Rosenberg and his novel, THIS IS NOT CIVILIZATION."

Miami Herald

chosen as one of the "best literary offerings of the season"
Applaud summer's Best Opening Sentence: "The idea of using porn films to encourage the dairy cows to breed was a poor one." But it's not just the first line of Robert Rosenberg's ambitious and enchanting debut novel that sings. Filled with knowing, deadpan humor and explicit understanding of what it's like to be pulled by and estranged from your homeland...In Rosenberg's generous, perceptive vision, any response is possible, maybe even noble.

Philadelphia Inquirer

The deft achievement of This Is Not Civilization... grows out of his surehanded grasp of [the] global status game.

Booklist

"Rosenberg's modern picaresque tour is a well-written, engaging, and promising debut."

Denver Post

"In Rosenberg's intriguing and often witty debut novel, two cultures a half a world apart, surrounded by inept government officials and schemers on the make, find themselves at the crossroads of extinction."Read all 12 "From The Critics" >

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

James Alan McPherson

"Beautiful...Rosenberg should be thanked for his insights into Middle Eastern culture at a time when understanding of that troubled region is essential." — winner of the Pulitzer Prize

Bob Shacochis

"For the past twenty years, returned Peace Corps volunteers-Paul Theroux, Norman Rush, Maria Thomas, Richard Wiley et al-have won just about every major literary award in the country, and Robert Rosenberg seems destined to be a member of this distinguished group of writers. This Is Not Civilization is a wonderful first novel, full of the marvelous compressions and juxtapositions and clashes that have indeed made the world a very small place." — winner of the National Book Award

Robert Olen Butler

"This Is Not Civilization is a remarkable novel that illuminates the most important struggle of our times: to find a self and to find kindredness in a world where our shared humanity is often lost to the claims of our superficial differences. Robert Rosenberg has written not only a wonderfully readable work of fiction but also an important one." — winner of the Pulitzer Prize

Brady Udall

Gripping...exotic and intimate. Every line rings with authenticity, every moment breathes with love and life and heartache. A beautiful, resonant book. — author of The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint

Darin Strauss

"Fiction of the highest order. With precise language, with insight and pathos and wit, this novel brings faraway places closer to home-a service that America needs more than ever." — author of Chang and Eng