The Tribes Triumphant: Return Journey to the Middle East - Hardcover

Glass, Charles

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0007131623 ISBN 13: 9780007131624

Publisher: HarperPress, 2006

Synopsis

A powerful and insightful narrative of a journey – once violently interrupted and here resumed – through one of the most compelling regions on earth.

In the late 1980s, Charles Glass set out on a literary and spiritual ramble from Alexandretta in southern Turkey for Aqaba, the first Turkish garrison conquered in 1917 by T.E. Lawrence and the tribal irregulars of the Arab revolt. He never reached his destination: his journey came to a brutal halt when he was kidnapped and held hostage for three months, a story told in his previous book, ‘Tribes with Flags’.

Now he reverses the journey, marching north along the path of the Levant's last successful invasion, by the Arabs of the Hejaz and Britain in 1917, since which time the region has been divided into Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Jordan. He traverses the Jordanian desert to the Iraqi border with Bedouin guides, explores modern Israel and revisits the scene of his captivity, confronting the men who kidnapped him. He visits the Israeli settlements and the Arab towns on whose land the settlements were constructed; he speaks to Israeli conscripts and Palestinian demonstrators, to old family chieftains and the Israeli Sabra aristocracy, to priests, rabbis and mullahs, politicians and assassins, torturers and tortured.

Glass believes that the only way to understand this complex region of the world, which so many different peoples desire to possess so intensely, is to walk its ancient paths, listen to its people, explore its ruins, eat its food and examine its manuscripts. The result is an exceptionally interesting book, whose beautifully lucid prose and sophisticated grasp of the interpenetration of past and future compel one’s delighted attention at all times.

About this title

Product Description:

The Tribes Triumphant: Return Journey to the Middle East

Review:

‘Fascinating...intriguing...Glass is skilled at bringing people alive...an important book.’ Sunday Times

‘Charles Glass reads like Taki with an explosives belt. Yet this attention to social form becomes a strength when it shows how a generation of insult by both British and Israeli occupiers has brought a traditional Arab society to the end of its tether...Even the ruling passions of Glass’s life and writing, which are good food and pretty women, contribute balance to the book.’ Spectator

‘He writes stylishly...the most absorbing passages in the book trace Glass's progress through Israel and the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza...Glass enlivens his text with some intriguing asides.’ Daily Mail

‘Anyone who is interested in the continuing agony of the Middle East should read this book.’ Literary Review

‘An eloquent and sensitive journey...with trademark flowing style and laconic humour.’ Oldie

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperPress
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0007131623
• ISBN 13: 9780007131624
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 480