Book description
Philip Marsden returns to the remote, fiercely beautiful landscape that
has exercised a powerful mythic appeal over him since his first
encounter with it over twenty years ago.
'Ethiopia bred in me the conviction that if there is a wider purpose to
our life, it is to understand the world, to seek out its diversity, to
celebrate its heroes and its wonders - in short, to witness it.'
When Philip Marsden first went to Ethiopia in 1982, it changed the
direction of his life. What he saw of its stunning antiquity, its raw
Christianity, its extremes of brutality and grace prompted his
curiosity, and made him a writer.
But Ethiopia at that time was torn apart by civil war. The north, the
ancient heartland of the country, was closed off. Twenty years later,
Marsden returned. The result is this book - the account of a journey deferred.
Walking hundreds of miles through a landscape of cavernous gorges,
tabletop mountains and semi-desert, Marsden encounters monks and
hermits, rebels and farmers. And he creates an unforgettable picture of
one of the most remote regions left on earth. As in his award-winning
book 'The Spirit-Wrestlers', Marsden reminds us of the brilliant heights
that travel writing can attain, whilst celebrating the ageless rewards
of the open road and the people for whom the mythic and the everyday are
inextricably joined. 'His exhilarating, sometimes burlesque narrative
introduces several fascinating characters…Ethiopia provides the questing
spirit, as does this thrilling and intelligent book.' Daily Telegraph
'He rises above the physical trail to produce short intense vignettes
that transport us to a world that few of us will ever see…As both
Traveller and Scribe, the best travel writers, like Marsden, hammer out
a chain between two worlds: the foreign and the familiar, the present
and historical, the journey physical and interior, the road hard
travelled and the story well told.' Sunday Times Philip Marsden is the
author of 'A Far Country: Travels in Ethiopia', 'The Crossing Place:
Among the Armenians' (which won the Somerset Maugham Award), 'The
Bronski House: A Return to the Borderlands' and 'The Spirit Wrestlers: A
Russian Journey' (Winner of the Thomas Cook Travel Book of the Year
Award). He is the editor of The Spectator Book of Travel Writing and is
a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. His work has been
translated into ten languages.
