The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Faultline Between Christianity and Islam - Hardcover

Griswold, Eliza

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1846144213 ISBN 13: 9781846144219

Publisher: Allen Lane, 2011

Synopsis

The tenth parallel - the line of latitude seven hundred miles north of the equator - is a geographical and ideological front line where Christianity and Islam collide.

Across much of inland Africa and Asia, from Nigeria, Sudan and Somalia to Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, live more than half of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims, and sixty percent of the world's 2 billion Christians. The space between the equator and the tenth parallel marks the end of Africa's arid north and the beginning of sub-Saharan jungle; in Southeast Asia, the encounter between the two religions is also driven by wind and weather, as the trade winds carried merchants of both faiths across the sea, and the clash of hot and cold air creates the hurricanes that travel across the earth to hit Latin and North American soil. On both sides of the line, the religions and their people are experiencing reawakenings of faith - and in their buzzing megacities and swarming jungle, the encounters between the two faiths is shaping the future.

Eliza Griswold, award-winning investigative journalist and poet, has spent the past seven years travelling the space between the equator and the tenth parallel, exploring the meanings and ramifications of this reawakening of faith, in a place where these changes may alter the future of what's called the Global South - and, in turn, the West. In each country along the faultline, she asks if it is possible to determine where faith ended and secular violence began, or what role religion actually plays in struggles over resources and political power. The story of this encounter between religions unfolds over nearly two thousand years and more than 600,000 square miles.

An urgent examination of the relationship between faith and worldly power, The Tenth Parallel is an essential work about the conflicts over religion, nationhood and natural resources that will remake the world in the years to come.

About this title

About the Author

Eliza Griswold, a fellow at the New America Foundation, received both the first Robert I. Friedman Award for investigative reporting and a 2010 Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome and wasa 2007 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. Her journalism has appeared in The Atlantic, The New Yorker,The New York Times Magazine, and Harper's Magazine, among others. A collection of her poems, Wideawake Field, was published by FSG in 2007. The Tenth Parallel is her first book and is the result of seven years' research and reporting across the tenth parallel.

Edition details

• Publisher: Allen Lane
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1846144213
• ISBN 13: 9781846144219
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 336