It’s got all the elements for a major publishing event: great drama and ground-breaking historical significance. Sound too good to be true? Yes, say some scholars. The circumstances surrounding Jacob’s manuscript are questionable. The translator, David Selbourne, a former political-philosophy professor at Ruskin College in England, says he got access to Jacob’s manuscript on two conditions: that he keep the identity of the owner a secret and that he keep the original from anyone else. ““The first thing you think is that it’s a hoax,’’ says Columbia professor Robert Hymes. But if the book is genuine (it is defensively subtitled ““An Authentic Traveler’s Tale’’), then it would supplant Marco Polo’s ““Travels’’ as the first European account of China. Moreover, it paints Zaitun in the 13th century as far more sordid than historians ever knew. Men dress like women, married people take lovers, men and women lie ““in infamy . . . coupling like beasts’’–in front of an audience.
The cries of hoaxdom don’t faze Selbourne, who admits that he has no expertise in Chinese history. ““The vipers are hissing in the grove of academia,’’ he says. ““Quote me on that. I’m expecting a terrific onslaught.’’ Well, it’s coming. ““There’s no way this is a 13th-century manuscript,’’ says Yale professor Jonathan Spence, an esteemed China scholar. ““That doesn’t mean Selbourne didn’t copy some Italian version of something.’’ Patrick Geary, a Western medievalist at UCLA, dismisses the account immediately. ““It’s a clever conceit for a novel,’’ he says, ““and a very clever way of getting attention.’’ So far, Dr. Luc Kwanten is one of the few academics embracing it. ““Authentic it is,’’ he declares in a fax. But the former University of Chicago professor is far from impartial–it turns out that he’s brokering the Chinese-language rights for Little, Brown U.K. Little, Brown in the United States is being more cautious. ““We are checking into issues of authenticity very closely,’’ says publisher (and former NEWSWEEK editor) Sarah Crichton. ““If it doesn’t check out, we’ll have to take a hard look.''
Without the original manuscript, certain tests can’t be done, like analyzing the handwriting or the quality of the paper. Selbourne says the owner wouldn’t let him photocopy the manuscript, which means that the original Italian can’t be examined. All that’s left is the content–and it would be very difficult to authenticate this book solely by what’s in it. But it’s considerably easier to discredit it on that basis. Hymes and Harvard professor Peter Bol, the top Sung-dynasty experts in the United States, say that ““City of Light’’ is riddled with major problems. For example, Jacob refers to the Sung emperor by his posthumous name, ““Toutson.’’ Problem is, Jacob leaves China in 1272, and the emperor doesn’t die until 1274. Also, Jacob calls the southern Chinese Manci. That’s a derogatory term used by the northern Mongols, meaning ““southern barbarians’’–and a word no Zaitunese would use to describe himself, says Bol. And Jacob explains that five pieces of paper money equals ““one sommo of silver’’–but, says Bol, silver wouldn’t be used as currency for more than 100 years.
The Chinese in ““City of Light’’ sound suspiciously like 20th-century Americans, says Hymes. They’ve got surprisingly modern ideas–that criminals aren’t to blame for their actions, for example, or that homosexuality is normal. Disapprovingly, Jacob describes the graphic violence in a performance–but his description fits current movies better than Chinese entertainment of the day, says Hymes. And some philosophical passages in the book sound like Western interpretations of Confucian thought from the 1950s. These anachronisms have led Hymes to wonder if ““someone was using the 13th century as an allegory for the 20th century.''
Selbourne is trying to hide his irritation with the brewing controversy. To the suggestion that he could be the true author of ““City of Light,’’ he says, ““I would then have written one of the great works of European fiction. It would be called “Picaresque Philosophical Novel Without Any Equal.’ Jacob d’Ancona would be my Don Quixote, I would be his Cervantes, and it’d certainly be worth the Nobel Prize for fiction.’’ He chuckles, ““Will you quote me on that?’’ Sure. But we can’t promise it’ll help sell books.
