Books
Red Star, Crescent Moon:
A Muslim-Jewish Love Story
by Robert A. Rosenstone
Scarith, 2010
238 pages, $24.00
In his career as historian, Robert Rosenstone has covered the globe of literary formats: pure history, historical reconstruction as fiction, the novel, the biography, and the autobiography. Rosenstone’s first foray into fiction, King of Odessa: A Novel of Isaac Babel, melded the novel with biography. Having subsequently swum in the waters of autobiographical writing with The Man Who Swam into History: The (Mostly) True Story of My Jewish Family, Rosenstone has now returned to mixing and matching formats. This time he appears to have hybridized autobiography and fiction in Red Star, Crescent Moon: A Muslim-Jewish Love Story.
The novel’s protagonist is Benjamin Redstone, a Jewish history professor who is serving as the historical consultant on a Hollywood film, Red Star in Madrid, based on his book Crusade in Spain, a history of the Americans who fought in the Spanish Civil War. The movie is being directed by megastar actor TJ (“The Most Beautiful Man in Hollywood”) and shot in Spain. Redstone’s love interest is Aisha, an Afghani-American filmmaker who is in Spain for a U.S. State Department–sponsored film festival highlighting American female directors and their work. Hers is Far from Afghanistan, a documentary about three refugee families in America after the Russian invasion of their country. Attractive and exotic, Aisha has lived in many parts of the world, but this is her first time in Europe. And as a Muslim, she is particularly interested in visiting the remains of 700 years of Muslim rule on the Iberian peninsula. Of course, Redstone is just the man to help her do that—a professor who has made some nine trips to Spain and is well versed—to say the least—in its culture and history.
Mixed into the storyline are Muslim terrorists taking hostages and raising the Islamic flag over the Calahorra Tower in Córdoba; assorted ex-wives; Islamic fundamentalists stalking the heroine; TJ taking great liberties with historical fact—as well as with every attractive woman who passes by; and several U.S. State Department apparatchiks wringing their hands over the leftish angle of TJ’s film. Combining those elements with a format of chapters written from the points of view of different characters, and interspersed with news reports, makes for a novel that has something for everyone: history, romance, travelogue, memoir, action, parody, politics, humor, and current events. Covering all that ground could make for a confusing literary experience, but it doesn’t. The novel has added entertainment value for readers familiar with Rosenstone’s real life, who may understand it as a roman a clef: after all, is it Redstone or Rosenstone? TJ or Warren Beatty? Red Star in Madrid or Reds? Crusade in Spain or Crusade of the Left? True life or not, it doesn’t really matter, because a good read is a good read, and Red Star, Crescent Moon is certainly that. Readers may think they know where the plot is headed, but with Rosenstone as their tour guide, the trip is still great fun. —PD
