From the Holy Mountain

A Journey in the Shadow of Byzantium

William Dalrymple

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English

Flamingo
29 July 1998

Travel & holiday; Travel writing

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.

By: William Dalrymple
Imprint: Flamingo
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 198mm, Width: 129mm, Spine: 33mm
Weight: 420g
ISBN: 9780006547747
ISBN 10: 0006547745
Pages: 512
Publication Date: 29 July 1998
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Author Website: http://www.williamdalrymple.uk.com

William Dalrymple was born in Scotland. His first book, In Xanadu, won the Yorkshire Post Best First Work Award and the Scottish Arts Council Spring Book Award, and was shortlisted for the John Llewelyn Rhys Prize. His second, City of Djinns, won the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award and the Sunday Times Young British Writer of the Year Award. He was recently elected the youngest Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and is currently writing a six-part television series on the buildings of the Raj for Channel 4.

Reviews for From the Holy Mountain: A Journey in the Shadow of Byzantium

The author describes the last rites of Christendom in a journey through its beleaguered outposts in the Middle East. He follows in the footsteps of John Moschos, a monk who in AD615 wrote about his travels in the Byzantine world at a time when the empire was being assailed from all sides. Dalrymple, too, had his fair share of run-ins with a rogues' gallery, from Turkish secret policemen to lighter moments, including a wonderful description of the 'inexhaustible lewd and lustful' Empress Theodora in Constantinople. (Kirkus UK)