William Dalrymple

From the Holy Mountain (eBook, ePUB)

A Journey in the Shadow of Byzantium (Text Only)

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

The third book from the most gifted young travel writer at work today, author of the best-selling In Xanadu ('one of the best travel books produced in the last twenty years' - Scotland on Sunday) and City of Djinns ('the best travel book I have ever read' - George Mackay Brown).

In the spring of 587 AD, two monks set off on an extraordinary journey that would take them in an arc across the entire Byzantine world, from the shores of the Bosphorus to the sand dunes of Egypt. On the way John Moschos and his pupil Sophronius the Sophist stayed in caves, monasteries and remote hermitages, collecting the wisdom of the stylites and the desert fathers before their world shattered under the great eruption of Islam. More than a thousand years later, using Moschos's writings as his guide, William Dalrymple set off to retrace their footsteps.
Despite centuries of isolation, a surprising number of the monasteries and churches visited by the two monks still survive today, surrounded by often hostile populations. Dalrymple's pilgrimage took him through a bloody civil war in eastern Turkey, the ruins of Beirut, the vicious tensions of the West Bank and a fundamentalist uprising in southern Egypt. His book is an elegy to the slowly dying civilisation of Eastern Christianity and the peoples that have kept its flame alive. It is a rich and gripping blend of history and spirituality, adventure and politics, laced with a thread of black comedy familiar to readers of Dalrymple's previous work.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: HarperCollins Publishers
• Seitenzahl: 512
• Erscheinungstermin: 21. Juni 2012
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9780007381326
• Artikelnr.: 38067349

Autorenporträt

William Dalrymple's first book, 'In Xanadu', won the Yorkshire Post Best First Work Award. His second, 'City of Djinns', won the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award and the Sunday Times Young British Writer of the Year Award. His third, 'From the Holy Mountain', was awarded the Scottish Arts Council Autumn Book Award and shortlisted for the Duff Cooper Prize and the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award. He has also published a collection of his pieces about India, 'The Age of Kali', and three history books: 'White Mughals', which won the Wolfson Prize, 'The Last Mughal', which won the Duff Cooper Prize, and 'Nine Lives', which won the Asia House Literary Award.

Rezensionen

'Compulsively readable.' John Julius Norwich, Observer

'Everything a really good travel book should be: witty, learned and also very funny.' Eric Newby

'Any travel writer who is so good at his job as to be brilliant, applauded, loved and needed has to have an unusual list of qualities, and William Dalrymple has them all in aces. Dalrymple's ear for conversation is as good as Alan Bennett's. The best and most unexpected book I have read since I forget when.' Peter Levi

'A rich stew of history and travel narrative spiced with anecdote, opinion and bon mots...The future of travel literature lies in the hands of gifted authors like Dalrymple who shine their torches into the shadowy hinterland of the human story - the most foreign territory of all.' Independent

'Dalrymple stands out as one of our most talented travel writers. Energetic, thoughtful, curious and courageous.' Sunday Times

'William Dalrymple has effortlessly assumed the mantle of Robert Byron and Patrick Leigh Fermor.' Guardian

'A splendid, effective and impressive book.' Financial Times