The Indies of the Setting Sun: How Early Modern Spain Mapped the Far East as the Transpacific West

Divided into four parts, the first discusses new definitions of “antiquity” and relates them to the post-World War I imperial order, while the other three deal with developments in different geographical regions – Palestine (pp. 61–155), Mesopotamia (pp. 157–246) and Egypt (pp. 247–342). The book’s contents command interest. Melman is at her strongest in the immense amount of research she has undertaken and the sources she has troubled to consult. Chapters such as “Murder in Mesopotamia: Antiquity, Genres of Modernity, and Gender in the Popular Crime Novel” (pp. 191–215), dealing with Agatha Christie and Max Mallowan, her archeologist husband, can be read with genuine pleasure. The placement of sources and comments at the bottom of relevant pages as footnotes, rather than at the back of the volume, is also a welcome development. There are not so many as to overpower the flow of the narrative and this arrangement saves real time for those who are interested in following up on comments or conclusions in the text.