Caravans is a work of Historical Fiction. Historical Fiction is a literary form in which the plot takes place in a setting located in the past.
Here, the story is: In 1946, Ellen Jasper, a native of Dorset, Pennsylvania, recently married to an Afghan engineer, and has not been heard from for thirteen months. The job of finding her falls to a young member of the staff of the American Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan - Mark Miller, who is the narrator of this extraordinary novel. The Time: March, 1946.
This is a sensitive assignment, requiring tact and patience, but apparently unexciting. His search, however, involves Mark Miller in a series of unexpected and perilous adventures, and takes him into wild and remote parts of the ancient kingdom. What he finds out about the missing girl, about himself, about the past and present of a fabulous country, and about Mira, the beautiful Nomad girl who teaches him many things - and these and many other discoveries the reader also makes and shares intimately with him.
Afghanistan, where the ancient and modern worlds exist side by side, is an especially appropriate setting for Mr. Michener's drama of our times. In 1946, when many aspects of the country were not too different from what Alexander found there in the fourth Century B. C., Afghanistan was seething with the forces that would soon erupt to bring it fully into the twentieth century. Caravans is that artful combination readers have learned to expect from Mr. Michener: a compelling and significant story, set vividly against a real background that gives a true sense of history and of place.
This book became a movie starring Anthony Quinn as Zulffiqar, the Afghan tribal chief, Jennifer O'Neill as Ellen Jasper, the daughter of a United States Senator, and Michael Sarrazin, as Mark Miller.
