Solomon's Island

by Matthew Fishbane

A random email containing what purports to be news of the Lost Temple of Solomon sends day-dreaming New York-based reporter Matthew Fishbane on a journey halfway around the world—to the Solomon Islands. There, in the remote jungles of Malaita, he encounters self-described Melanesian Israelites with apocalyptic visions, dreamers guarding archaeological ruins of unknown but apparently ancient provenance, and a warlord who rallied an ethnic militia under the Star of David, as well as canny modern politicians who are leveraging the tiny island nation’s greatest asset—sovereignty—for development assistance from the modern Jewish state. When the stray rumors that float across our laptop and iPhone screens are followed to their source, reality turns out to be even wilder and more compelling than fiction.

Praise for Solomon’s Island:

“The stylish expeditionary prose of 19th-century adventurers has found a new seductive voice in Matthew Fishbane, whose madcap adventure takes him to the outback among the Solomon’s one-thousand islands in the Pacific—literally in the clutches of a guy named Stalin, a forest guide known as Dudley, and a third explorer described as ‘a Daguerreotype in negative of a full-bearded Darwin’—as they head into perhaps the most remote jungle not only on the planet but, surreally, on the Internet as well, struggling to find King Solomon’s Temple in what should be the last place to look, and yet … somewhere, Stanley and Livingstone are fuming with envy.”
—Jack Hitt, contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine, contributor to This American Life, Harper’s, Rolling Stone, and Wired, and author, most recently, of Bunch of Amateurs: A Search for the American Character

Genres: Nonfiction

Kindle Edition

First published March 14, 2013

Reviews

[Mitchell · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thought I would find this more interesting. Couldn't really see the point. Seems like a bit of a bait and switch. Very little about what I thought would be the premise - the rumor of Solomon's Temple on the Solomon Islands. But was that the point? Not sure.

[Kerry · Rating 1 out of 5]

This piece can only be described as incoherent. Characters flit in and out of the narrative with no grounding in who they are or what their relevancy is, information is provided in random order, and it isn't even clear what's fact and what's myth, or if the author is laughing at the people he talks to or considers them to be legitimate contributors to his efforts, whatever those may be.

[Gerald R. Kirby · Rating 1 out of 5]

Don't waste your time.

Don't waste your time.

A long twisted tale with NO payoff. Hard to follow and it didn't hold my interest. It was work to finish. Not a fun read.

[Joe · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's ok. The subject matter isn't massively interesting and the writing doesn't exactly pull you in.

[andrew y · Rating 2 out of 5]

this was okay but did not come close in its goal to live up to how incredibly promising the blurbs & first few pages made it out to be.