The Crossing Place: A Journey among the Armenians

by Philip Marsden

Overview

A revised and updated edition of Philip Marsden’s classic travel book, published to coincide with the centenary of the Armenian massacres.

After centuries of prominence as a world power, Armenia has withstood every attempt during the 20th century to destroy it. With a name redolent both of dim antiquity and of a modern world and its tensions, the Armenians founded a civilization and underwent a diaspora that brought many of the great ideas of the East to Western Europe.

The Crossing Place is Philip Marsden’s gripping account of his remarkable journey through the Middle East, Eastern Europe and the Caucasus in a quest to discover the secret of one of the world’s most extraordinary peoples.

Caught between opposing empires, between warring religions and ideologies – at the crossing place of history – the Armenians have somehow survived against the odds. This is their story – told by one of the finest travel writers at work today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780008127435
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	05/26/2015
Edition description:	Revised ed.
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	5.08(w) x 7.80(h) x 0.04(d)

About the Author

Philip Marsden is the author of The Bronski House, The Spirit-Wrestlers (winner of the Thomas Cook Travel Book of the Year Award), The Chains of Heaven, The Barefoot Emperor, The Levelling Sea and Rising Ground. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and his work has been translated into more than a dozen languages. He lives in Cornwall.

Editorial Reviews

‘A stylish and beautifully written elegy to a lost civilisation….The Crossing Place is about loss and exile, and its pages are full of displaced communities and tenaciously maintained traditions, strange discoveries and odd conversations, all illuminated with brilliant flashes of esoteric learning’ William Dalrymple, Spectator

‘Marsden's fine and unostentatious travel writing is criss-crossed with traces of politics and cultural history… This is a beautifully written book, with enough incident and observation to convey the unpredictabilities of real travel’ Noel Malcolm, Sunday Telegraph

‘A terrific travel book’ Nicholas Lezard, Guardian

‘A wonderful journey recounted with knowledge, humour and a beautiful, elegiac sadness’ Observer

‘An extraordinary travel narrative … As a history of the Armenian spirit in the twentieth century, this is possibly the most important book in decades’ TLS

‘He has gone into a world that remains closed to most outsiders and brought back wonderful pictures’ Independent

‘The way Marsden uncovers the traditions and secrets of these people from right under Europe’s nose is enthralling’ Sunday Times

From the Publisher

Nothing makes a better case for comparing the executions of Turkey's Armenian population during WWI to those of Europe's Jews in WWII than Hitler's dictum ``After all, who now remembers the Armenians?'' Well, Marsden, for one. In his search for the Armenian diaspora, the English author of A Far Country: Travels in Ethiopia traveled through the Levant at the height of the Gulf War and through Eastern Europe after the fall of the Iron Curtain-17 countries in all. After visiting Armenian communities in Venice and Jerusalem, Marsden went to Beirut, long ``Armenia's unofficial capital-in-exile'' (that Beirut is a haven itself speaks volumes). The Armenian network in the Middle East proved enormously resourceful, helping Marsden across dangerous borders with uncanny efficiency. By contrast, the Eastern European Armenians were less cohesive-in part, no doubt, because many trace their exile to 1064 and because, as Christians in Christian countries, their integration was easier. There is much history here, added layer by layer, but Marsden's real strength is in his descriptions and in his willingness to put himself at the mercy of circumstances during a raw and tumultuous time. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Originally published in England in 1993, this is the first American edition of a haunting book on the devastation of an ancient culture. After the 1915 genocide by the Turks, many of the remaining Armenians were scattered throughout the Middle East. Marsden, a British journalist, wanders through this Armenian diaspora, from the Armenian Quarter in Jerusalem to the former Soviet Republic of Armenia. In his search for the Armenian spirit, Marsden encounters Armenian descendants in a variety of situations with an abundance of stories and memories. A powerful introductory essay by Peter Sourian provides the historical and cultural background to Marsden's journeys, and the book is generously illustrated. As a personal memoir, this work is a worthy companion to Michael J. Arlen's Passage to Ararat (LJ 11/1/75) and complements David Marshall Lang's standard work, The Armenians: A People in Exile (Unwin Hyman, 1989). Recommended for public and academic libraries.-Thomas Karel, Franklin & Marshall Coll. Lib., Lancaster, Pa.

Library Journal