Review: "The King at the Edge of the World," Arthur Phillips

By Paul Carrier

As this spellbinding novel opens, Mahmoud Ezzedine seems to have it all. A well-respected doctor in Constantinople, he serves as the personal physician to the sultan of the Ottoman Empire. Ezzedine has a lovely home in a charming setting, a wife he adores and a young son whom he loves dearly.

But devastating complications loom. When the sultan’s top advisers dispatch a diplomatic mission to England in 1591, Ezzedine, who has no desire to leave Constantinople, is sent along to care for the ambassador and his retinue during their travels.

Unbeknownst to Ezzedine, the ambassador’s deputy, Cafir bin Ibrahim, hopes to marry the good doctor’s wife, Saruka. How to get Ezzedine out of the way? As the English visit winds down and the Turks prepare to return home, Ibrahim concocts a scheme to leave Ezzedine behind in London, as a gift of sorts from the sultan to Queen Elizabeth.

Ezzedine is heartbroken, but powerless to resist. In time, out of necessity, he converts to Christianity and changes his name to Matthew Thatcher. The queen eventually “gifts” him to a sickly baron whom she sends home to the north of England, where Ezzedine remains until he gets drawn into an investigation of Elizabeth’s likely successor.

By the early 1600s, Elizabeth, old and childless, is unwell and near death. The presumed heir to her Protestant realm is King James VI of Scotland, but there may be complications because of the longstanding struggle between Protestants and Catholics for religious dominance in England.

James was raised as a Protestant, which should appease the powers that be in England. But he is the son of Catholic parents and his wife is a Catholic. His mother was Mary, Queen of Scots, who was executed in 1588 for her involvement in a plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth.

How, then, can England’s political luminaries learn the Scottish king’s true religious beliefs? As a Protestant, James would be an acceptable successor to Elizabeth. As a Catholic, his coronation would ignite yet another religious bloodbath.

Geoffrey Belloc, a Protestant undercover operative for Elizabeth's government, has a plan. Or, at least, the outline of one. With the blessing of Robert Cecil, Elizabeth’s secretary of state and the power behind the throne, Belloc heads north to persuade the renamed Ezzedine to insinuate himself into the Scottish king’s confidence and nail down his religious allegiance.

Will the humble but sophisticated Ezzedine succeed in his mission? What if the Scottish king snubs him, or is vague and elusive about his views on religion? If Ezzedine succeeds, will Belloc fulfill his promise to return the kindly, misunderstood doctor to Constantinople?

Part of the appeal of this elegant, fast-paced novel springs from the diametrically opposed cultural and religious views of the Turks and the English. Just as the English see Turks as inferiors and heathen practitioners of a bogus religion, Ezzedine views the English — Protestants and Catholics alike — as foolish, brutal zealots who do not recognize the one true God. Scotland, he later decides, is a desolate wasteland with few, if any, saving graces.

Ezzedine is presumed by some in Britain to be a malevolent wizard rather than the skilled physician that he is. For his part, Ezzedine disdains Britain as a foggy, filthy backwater full of drunks, liars and imbeciles, where dueling Christians slaughter one another because they cannot agree on how to interpret their shared religious book.

The truth can be elusive in The King at the Edge of the World, but readers will enjoy the search. In fact, there's a shocking revelation near the end of the novel that sheds a whole new light on a key plot twist. In the process, this startling disclosure redefines our understanding of Mahmoud Ezzedine. No spoilers, but let's just say there's more to this fellow than meets the eye.