“A Delightful Compendium of Consolation” certainly is “A Fabulous Tale of Romance, Adventure and Faith in the Medieval Mediterranean.” The Delightful Compendium is a series of letters written between a young Jewish girl, members of her family, and a Rabbi friend of the family. Karimah, the young Jewish girl, runs off with a Muslim boy at the beginning of the story. The letters she writes to her brother recount her many adventures. Her father is terribly disappointed in her actions and decides she is dead to him. His many letters are to his friend, Rabbi Nissim. Nissim’s letters are filled with stories to offer comfort to the grieving father, thus the “Compendium of Consolation.”

The first two thirds of the book are the most exciting. These relate Karimah’s adventures in the desert and on the sea. I loved Karimah’s stories. Many of them are from “1001 Arabian Nights”, which I’d just finished reading with my children and so was very familiar with. It was quite amusing to read Karimah’s adventures and realize that she was “borrowing” from other sources. One example in particular that I enjoyed was her explanation of the term “Open, sesame!” She claims that her fellow sailors enjoy a hard, sticky candy made of sesame seeds and honey. This candy is so sticky that the sailors must pry their mouths open with their fingers and sometimes with sticks! They then joke each other by crying “Open, sesame!” Karimah is a witty, enjoyable character, full of spunk and rather more outgoing than I’d imagined women of this era to be.

In the last third of the book, Karimah settles down and the tone becomes more serious. The entire book is a fascinating look at what life was like for the Jewish communities in early AD1000. Burton Visotzky is a Jewish Scholar. He has based his story on actual letters from this era, found in a synagogue in Cairo, Egypt.

If you have any interest in history or Jewish culture, I highly recommend this book. If you enjoy a good story, I also recommend it, but you are forewarned that it isn’t an easy voyage. I found the map on page 2 and the “Notes On Sources” indispensable for my understanding of the story. Don’t forget about those resources, if you decide to tackle this amusing, yet challenging, story! ( )

This was the first book I received through LibraryThing and I was, of course, fascinated by the title. When it came I was a little skeptical at first based on the cover and the nature of the book. It looked like a self-published tome and that also gave me pause.
Once I started to read, however, I was hooked. This is not typical of the kind of book I enjoy but the story, which takes place in medieval North Africa, definitely grabbed me. I wanted to find out how this Jewish family, living in the midst of the Islamic world would fare. In the end it was a great way to learn about the history of a time and place I knew very little about.
I can't vouch for the historical accuracy and there is a bit of a need to suspend one's disbelief but in the end the notion of a young woman making her way in this treacherous world made enough sense.
I'd recommend the Compendium to those who like myths and legends as well as those who love historical fiction not so much for the history but for the story. ( )

I thoroughly enjoyed A DELIGHTFUL COMPENDIUM though I'm not sure it's a very good novel. By drawing on the literary treasures of the 11th century diasporic Jewish community in Northern Africa, the author gives his readers an invaluable window into the times and the cultures, not only of the Jewish rabbinic and Kuarite (which I had never heard of before) traditions, but also of the Fatimid Islamic caliphate and Coptic Christianity. Our educational system with its Eurocentric focus rarely examines the Middle Ages as it played out in Northern Africa. I found the history fascinating.

The epistolary construction of the novel works best in the first part of the book which covers a period of a little over two years with the letter writers, Karimah, her father Dunash, and his spiritual mentor, Nissim, chronicling their lives on a fairly extensive basis. As the time stretches out in the second and third parts of the book, events are sketched in much less detail over fewer letters, and the personalities of the characters seem to pale.

The major theme of the book is stated at the center of the book in Chapter 8: "Although it is not a text of the law our rabbis long ago reckoned that stories draw the hearts of men." As much as anything, this is a novel about storytelling -- the storytelling of the Midrash, of the 1001 Arabian Nights, of the stories that family members tell to each other, and of the stories that we all must tell to affirm our human connections, both within, and even more importantly outside of our local communities. ( )

Very enjoyable and educational. A reader more familiar with the source materials -- 1001 Arabian Nights and rabbinic lore from various writings -- might find some of the stories overly familiar, but most of them were new to me.

A Delightful Compendium of Consolation is a fictional account based on actual documents discovered in the Cairo Geniza that date back to the ninth century. Several of the characters in the novel are real people, while others are fictional creations. Visotzky organizes his book as a series of letters between four of the main characters detailing the reaction of a family to a daughter's choice to run away with the man she loves, and the daughter's adventures away from the family.

There were parts of this novel that I truly enjoyed. However, I often found the structure to be frustrating - just as I was getting into the story, the narrator changed, which disrupted the flow. I eventually found myself skimming through to get to the parts about Karimah, which I thought were the most interesting. I think my main problem was that I could never quite lose myself in the story because of the abrupt changes. I did find much of the historical information fascinating, and enjoyed learning more about a period of time I know little about. I am not sure I can say that I enjoyed this novel, but I can certainly appreciate the opportunity to read it. Thanks Early Reviewers and Ben Yehuda press! ( )