Sometimes you get an unexpected bonus. I checked out an audiobook, Genghis: Birth of an Empire and started listening to it without reading any background on it.
After a few chapters, I finally thought "what is this story about?" The main character was a guy named Temüjin and he did not seem to be headed for any greatness. Before I spent too much time on a story that might not be anything like what I expected, I looked it up.
I knew the book was fiction, but it's that genre of book that is fiction in the sense that no one could have know the dialogue or minor action. The background or overlay of the story is accurate. I guess you could call it fictionalized history or historical fiction.
Genghis Khan lived around the year 1200. As you can imagine, there are not very good records of this time. However, he apparently dictated his history at some time in his life. All original versions of his history in his native language are lost, but a Chinese translation survived. This is what Conn Iggulden's book was based on.
This is a story that really grips you. You can imagine the harsh conditions and the tough life that the Mongol people endured. Temüjin was betrayed and abandoned with his family when he was 12 and not only managed to live, but went on to unify a group of tribes that had been warring against each other for as long as they could remember. The book takes you up to the betrayal of the Chinese ambassador and the defeat of the Tatars. There is a second book that should take you into some of the other conquests, I am definitely going to listen to it.
It was fortunate to find this book as an audiobook. The problem is that the names mess you up. They don't pronounce their K's, so the tribal leaders were actually called "Han". The images that stick in your mind when you listen to the story are the way they shoot their arrows when all 4 feet of the horse are off the ground, so that they get a steady shot.
It's not hard it imagine a life this harsh, with survival of the fittest making the tribes grow stronger each year, and constant warfare honing the warrior skills to a peak. The only thing that was missing was for someone to come along and unify the tribes into a single unstoppable unit.
It seems like a time long past and no longer able to give us lessons for today, but strength coming out of adversity and failure being a primer for success are two things that could be considered pertinent for today. Also useful, the thought of a unifying leader that can bring everyone together and make for an unstoppable people.
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