Mirror To Damascus

Mirror To Damascus
Author :
Publisher : Random House
Total Pages : 240
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781446483657
ISBN-13 : 1446483657
Rating : 4/5 (57 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Mirror To Damascus by : Colin Thubron

Download or read book Mirror To Damascus written by Colin Thubron and published by Random House. This book was released on 2011-06-08 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A 50th anniversary edition of Colin Thubron's celebrated first book, a portrait of Syria's capital city, with a new introduction by the author. Described by the author as simply 'a work of love', Mirror to Damascus provides a rich and fascinating history of Damascus from the Amorites of the Bible to the revolution of 1966, and is also a charming and witty personal record of an extraordinary city. In explaining how modern Damascus is rooted in immemorial layers of culture and tradition, Colin Thubron explores the historical, artistic, social and religious inheritance of its people. Along the way, he shares unforgettable stories about the enterprising travellers of bygone days. Mirror to Damascus is a unique portrait of a city now obscured by recent upheavals, by one of the most indefatigable and popular of travel writers.

The Road from Damascus

The Road from Damascus
Author :
Publisher : Penguin UK
Total Pages : 374
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780141918518
ISBN-13 : 0141918519
Rating : 4/5 (18 Downloads)

Book Synopsis The Road from Damascus by : Robin Yassin-Kassab

Download or read book The Road from Damascus written by Robin Yassin-Kassab and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2008-06-05 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is summer 2001 and Sami Traifi has escaped his fraying marriage and minimal job prospects to visit Damascus. In search of his roots and himself, he instead finds a forgotten uncle in a gloomy back room, and an ugly secret about his beloved father... Returning to London, Sami finds even more to test him as his young wife Muntaha reveals that she is taking up the hijab. Sami embarks on a wilfully ragged journey in the opposite direction, away from religion – but towards what? As Sami struggles to understand Muntaha’s newly-deepened faith, her brother Ammar’s hip hop Islamism and his father-in-law’s need to see grandchildren, so his emotional and spiritual unraveling begins to accelerate. And the more he rebels, the closer he comes to betraying those he loves, edging ever-nearer to the brink of losing everything... Set against a powerfully-evoked backdrop of multi-ethnic, multi-faith London, The Road from Damascus explores themes as big as love, faith and hope, and as fundamental as our need to believe in something bigger than ourselves, whatever that might be.

Cairo to Damascus

Cairo to Damascus
Author :
Publisher : Carlson Press
Total Pages : 518
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781443728782
ISBN-13 : 1443728780
Rating : 4/5 (82 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Cairo to Damascus by : John Roy Carlson

Download or read book Cairo to Damascus written by John Roy Carlson and published by Carlson Press. This book was released on 2008-11 with total page 518 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: CAIRO TO DAMASCUS by JOHN ROY CARLSON. PREFACE: IT seems to me there are two ways, generally speaking, to pre pare a book, take a trip, or, for that matter, to live a life. One may go at it dilettante fashion, as a tourist nibbling at ex perience, titillating the emotions yet emotionally starved, stimulating oneself with ambition yet forever tortured by frustration. Circumstances and temperament, however, may conspire together so that, with the freedom of a nomad, one can escape the straightjacket of everyday boredom, hurdle fences of space and time, and consume life at its sources. Prop erly directed, such an earthly life may give wing to one's imagination, clarity to one's thinking, strength to one's convic tions, and even bring one nearer to the simple, eternal truths of God and spirit This book, I feel, belongs in the second category the cate gory of the primitive. I left my country quite as uninformed, I am afraid, as are most Americans with respect to other peoples and other shores. But everywhere I went I sought to touch reality always honestly, and always at first hand. Everywhere I clung close to the smells, the flora and fauna of native existence. In that spirit I have written of the Arabs among whom I lived. I found much good and much evil evil acquired through a feudal order that, in rny opinion, remains the Arab's greatest enemy and his greatest barrier to emergence from the dark ages. I am grateful for Arab hospitality and the kindness I was shown, but a reporter, like a physician, must not remain blind to the ills plaguing his subject. With no desire to attribute to myself or my writings any viii Preface exaggerated importance, it is my fervent hope that the manyArmenians living in the Arab Middle East will not suffer at the hands of fanatics because an American of Armenian descent happened to write this book. To them I can only say that I have told the story honestly, as I saw it. And to my Arab friends who asked only that I tell the truth/' I can say in all conscience that I have told the truth. Let me assure them that I speak in this book as an American, and purely in an individual capacity, with no ties to or membership in any Armenian-American body save the church into which I was born. Any retribution against the Armenians a minority island in a Moslem sea would be an unwarranted and senseless cruelty. I have written this book with the hope that it will bring both Arabs and Jews into truer focus for the reader; that it will help reveal what they are and what they are not, what may be ex pected of them and what is impossible. I pray that these ancient Semitic peoples will reconcile their differences, that Palestine refugees who, in the main, left their homes because Arab leaders urged them to do so expecting a short war and a quick victory will be resettled. The only alternative to peace is disaster for Arab, Jew, and Christian, for none may hope to prosper alone. Together they may ultimately build a prosperous and democratic Middle East. To remain apart, at dagger's point, means only that Communism and anarchy can be the ultimate victors.

The Road to Damascus

The Road to Damascus
Author :
Publisher : The Floating Press
Total Pages : 417
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781775450405
ISBN-13 : 1775450406
Rating : 4/5 (05 Downloads)

Book Synopsis The Road to Damascus by : August Strindberg

Download or read book The Road to Damascus written by August Strindberg and published by The Floating Press. This book was released on 2010-12-01 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Swedish writer August Strinberg played a major role in introducing a more modernist sensibility into his native country's literature, producing several major novels and plays that are still regarded as some of the most significant works of twentieth-century Swedish literature. The Road to Damascus is a dramatic trilogy that broke new ground in stagecraft and characterization, touching on complex themes of spirituality and selfhood in the process.

Journey Into Cyprus

Journey Into Cyprus
Author :
Publisher : Random House
Total Pages : 418
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781448156115
ISBN-13 : 1448156114
Rating : 4/5 (15 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Journey Into Cyprus by : Colin Thubron

Download or read book Journey Into Cyprus written by Colin Thubron and published by Random House. This book was released on 2012-07-31 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cyprus, spring 1972. Tensions are rising between the Greek South and the Turkish North. Within two years, the country will become divided. It is at this distinctive time in history British travel writer Colin Thubron embarks on a 600 mile trek across the country. Moving from Greek villages to Turkish towns, the author of Shadow of the Silk Road and Night of Fire provides a profound look into the people of Cyprus – from Orthodox monks to wedding parties to peasant families – against the landscape of a beautiful Mediterranean island on the eve of chaos and tragedy. A remarkable quest rich in literature, classics and architecture, Journey Into Cyprus ingeniously intertwines the history and politics of Cyprus and its mythical past with the tumultuous present – from the master of travel books and writing, Colin Thubron. ‘An accomplished linguist and historian, his passionate concern for antiquity in all its aspects - mythological, architectural, conceptual - lends weight and warmth to every chapter’ Financial Times

Damascus

Damascus
Author :
Publisher : Routledge
Total Pages : 409
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781134488490
ISBN-13 : 1134488491
Rating : 4/5 (90 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Damascus by : Ross Burns

Download or read book Damascus written by Ross Burns and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2007-06-11 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first book in English to relate the history of Damascus, bringing out the crucial role the city has played at many points in the region's past. Damascus traces the history of this colourful, significant and complex city through its physical development, from the city's emergence in around 7000 BC through the changing cavalcade of Aramaean, Persian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Arab, Mongol and French rulers right up to the end of Turkish control in 1918. In Damascus, every layer of the history has built precisely on top of its predecessors for at least three millennia, leaving a detailed archaeological record of one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. The book looks particularly at the interplay between the western and eastern influences that have provided Damascus with such a rich past, and how this perfectly encapsulates the forces that have played over the Middle East as a whole from the earliest recorded times to the present. Lavishly illustrated, Damascus: A History is a compelling and unique exploration of a fascinating city.

To a Mountain in Tibet

To a Mountain in Tibet
Author :
Publisher : Harper Collins
Total Pages : 259
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780062066053
ISBN-13 : 0062066056
Rating : 4/5 (53 Downloads)

Book Synopsis To a Mountain in Tibet by : Colin Thubron

Download or read book To a Mountain in Tibet written by Colin Thubron and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2011-03-01 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A superb account of a pilgrimage. . . . Characteristically beautiful, though uncharacteristically haunted." —Pico Iyer, New York Review of Books "Thubron walks for the dead and writes for the living, and I can't remember when I have been so thoroughly and deeply moved by an author's outward journey inward." —Bob Shacochis, Boston Globe New York Times bestselling author Colin Thubron returns with a moving, intimate, and exquisitely crafted travel memoir recounting his pilgrimage to the Hindu and Buddhist holy mountain of Kailas—whose peak represents the most sacred place on Earth to roughly a quarter the global population. With echoes of Peter Matthiessen’s The Snow Leopard, Peter Hessler’s Country Driving, and Paul Theoroux’s Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, Thubron’s follow up to his bestselling Shadow of the Silk Road will illuminate, interest, and inspire anyone interested in traveling the world or journeying into the soul.