WATANI International
12 August 2010
Saving Adam Smith: A Tale of Wealth, Transformation, and Virtue is an academic suspense novel that comprises both crude economic ideas and the splendour of imagination. To anyone who reads the novel, written by Jonathan B. Wight and translated into Arabic by Samir Karim, economics is no more such an obscure or dismal science. Wight is a Professor at the University of Richmond and author of The Working Life: The Promise and Betrayal of Modern Work. He was born in Washington, and has spent most of his life in Africa and Latin America.
Given my interest in economics, I was eager to read the whole novel in addition to the supplements and literature review. Thanks to the translator’s persistent effort—Mr Karim is a former deputy minister of economics—the Arabic version turned out to be a masterpiece, with reality and imagination mixed in an exceptionally interesting style.
Smith reincarnated
In the introduction he wrote to the Arabic version, Gouda Abdel-Khaleq, professor of economics at Cairo University, said that the novel employed the phenomenon of reincarnation. Harold Timms is an aging Romanian immigrant who works as a truck mechanic and lives in a small town in the United States. One day, Timms starts to echo ambiguous words while saying that they belong to Adam Smith, the “Father of Economics”. As the voice of Adam Smith takes over Timms’s mind, Smith’s words are used to challenge the false interpretations of his ideas by the economists of the 20th century, who pretend that he considered greed to be the foundation of human progress. By contrast, Smith’s words, channelled through the mind of Timms, emphasise that morality is the foundation of an economically sound world and that economic choices should be guided by justice and conscience.
The novel’s protagonist is a doctoral student, Richard Burns, who is involved in building a mathematical model, much to the interest of his mentor, Bob Lathimer, chair professor in economics at Boston, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and WorldChemm, a giant corporation seeking to use the model for the acquisition of a Russian aluminium company.
Julia Brox is a British-American friend of Burns who is active in church charity work. A priest asks her to help Timms who is suffering from loneliness after losing his wife a year before. He has neither friends nor relatives in the town, while Smith’s voice, which he hears day and night, robs him of sleep.
Ten questions
Meanwhile Professor Lathimer boasts of being one of the pundits of post-war economy. Due to his prestigious position at Boston Cambridge, he usually obtains funds from foreign governments and international organisations for the consultations and advices he provides. Following the collapse of the USSR, professor Lathimer and his counterparts jumped to fill the intellectual vacuum. They engineered the implementation of neo-liberal policies including cutting back on taxes, eliminating tariffs and other barriers to free trade, reducing regulations of labour and financial markets and limiting government spending on social services and subsidies. Neo-liberalism managed to take hold, notwithstanding the misery it has inflicted on millions of people in poor countries. Having a lead in putting this approach into practice, professor Lathimer has become a permanent guest at international conferences, ministerial meetings, and businessmen’s weekend resorts.
Julia attempts to persuade Burns to help Timms get rid of Smith’s spirit through listening to what he says. Burns, who has fallen in love with Julia, agrees to help although he has another purpose in mind: proving that Timms is a liar. Burns reads a host of writings on Adam Smith, his life, works and ideas. He goes to Timms with ten questions covering Smith’s life details and thoughts, supposing that Timms will fail to answer them correctly. To his surprise, Timms manages to answer all the questions using the language of Smith himself.
Gem of a translation
Burns takes Timms as his mentor, repudiating the ideas of Professor Lathimer. To make his mathematical models available to everybody, he publishes them on the Internet.
Wight’s fictional adventure brings to light the core philosophy of Adam Smith, who for too long has been maligned, misquoted and misunderstood in order to rationalise an economic system that he himself would never have promoted. The Arabic translation is truly a gem of an addition to the Arabic library.