The Crossing Place: A Journey Among the Armenians (Kodansha Globe) [Paperback]

Philip Marsden (Author), Peter Sourian (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1995 | Series: Kodansha Globe

After centuries of prominence as a world power, Armenia has withstood every attempt during the 20th century to destroy it. With a name redolent both of dim antiquity and of a modern world and its tensions, the Armenians founded a civilization and underwent a diaspora that brought many of the great ideas of the East to Western Europe. Today, shrunk to a tenth of its former size and wracked by war with Azerbaijan and by earthquakes, its people still retain one of the world's most fascinating and misunderstood cultures. This book is a passionate and dramatic portrait of this country - the people and their massive exodus, as well as of the unique society that remains tentatively attached to the CIS. Travelling from Venice to Istanbul, passing through Eastern Europe, Beirut and Syria, and crossing the Black Sea to the Caucasus and into Armenia, the author takes us on a journey through time and history as we come to know this closed society.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Nothing makes a better case for comparing the executions of Turkey's Armenian population during WWI to those of Europe's Jews in WWII than Hitler's dictum ``After all, who now remembers the Armenians?'' Well, Marsden, for one. In his search for the Armenian diaspora, the English author of A Far Country: Travels in Ethiopia traveled through the Levant at the height of the Gulf War and through Eastern Europe after the fall of the Iron Curtain--17 countries in all. After visiting Armenian communities in Venice and Jerusalem, Marsden went to Beirut, long ``Armenia's unofficial capital-in-exile'' (that Beirut is a haven itself speaks volumes). The Armenian network in the Middle East proved enormously resourceful, helping Marsden across dangerous borders with uncanny efficiency. By contrast, the Eastern European Armenians were less cohesive--in part, no doubt, because many trace their exile to 1064 and because, as Christians in Christian countries, their integration was easier. There is much history here, added layer by layer, but Marsden's real strength is in his descriptions and in his willingness to put himself at the mercy of circumstances during a raw and tumultuous time.

Copyright 1995 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Originally published in England in 1993, this is the first American edition of a haunting book on the devastation of an ancient culture. After the 1915 genocide by the Turks, many of the remaining Armenians were scattered throughout the Middle East. Marsden, a British journalist, wanders through this Armenian diaspora, from the Armenian Quarter in Jerusalem to the former Soviet Republic of Armenia. In his search for the Armenian spirit, Marsden encounters Armenian descendants in a variety of situations with an abundance of stories and memories. A powerful introductory essay by Peter Sourian provides the historical and cultural background to Marsden's journeys, and the book is generously illustrated. As a personal memoir, this work is a worthy companion to Michael J. Arlen's Passage to Ararat (LJ 11/1/75) and complements David Marshall Lang's standard work, The Armenians: A People in Exile (Unwin Hyman, 1989). Recommended for public and academic libraries.
Thomas Karel, Franklin & Marshall Coll. Lib., Lancaster, Pa.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Kodansha America Inc (February 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1568360525
• ISBN-13: 978-1568360522
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,552,370 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #30 in Books > Travel > Asia > Armenia

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent travel/history book about the Armenians, June 21, 2000

By 

"shamz" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Crossing Place: A Journey Among the Armenians (Kodansha Globe) (Paperback)

Mardsen's book is a unique combination of present travel storytelling and history. Few books have explained the Armenian people, how they think (and why), what they have been through, and what they hope for, so well. By visiting different Armenian Diaspora groups, he gets a unique perspective from Armenians everywhere, not just Armenians from the Republic or the United States. The reader can tell that Mardsen is entranced by the Armenians and their culture and this creates an extremely interesting and good read. It is also filled with quite a few interesting and little known facts about Armenians. This is a great book for anyone interested in Armenians and their culture, past and present.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Quest for Ararat, September 19, 2002

By 

Carool Kersten - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Crossing Place: A Journey Among the Armenians (Kodansha Globe) (Paperback)

Philip Marsden clearly harbors a special interest in eastern Christian traditions, for they run like a red thread through his three travel books. In "A Far Country: Travels in Ethiopia" he visits this sole surviving Christian nation in the Horn of Africa, surrounded by Islamic countries. "The Spirit Wrestlers" explores a plethora of religious movement springing up in Russia, Ukraine and the Caucasus in the wake of the Societ Union's downfall..

In "The Crossing Place" Marsden sets out to investigate the tragic fate of the Armenians, an ancient Christian people from the Caucasus. This mountainous region tugged in between the Black and Caspian Seas lies on the crossroads of the old Persian, Turkish and Russian realms. It is also the place were six of the world's twelve tectonic plates meet, making it one of the most earthquake-prone regions in the world. Because of this geographical position Armenia's fate is permeated with disaster, both natural and man-made. These experiences have made dislocation a continuous theme in Armenian history and provide the book with a double travel motif: not only the author is constantly on the move, but so is his subject.

Marsden became interested in the Armenians through a chance encounter in eastern Turkey. There he stumbled on some fragmentary remains of the 1915 Armenian genocide. Intrigued by what he had found he decided to work his way back to the Armenian heartland.

The first part of the book is situated in the Near East, where Armenia had almost ceased to exist, "pushed down one of history's side-alleys and murdered". Or so it seemed, had they not been such a resilient people. Marsden picks up the trail in the Armenian quarter of Jerusalem. He learns that the Armenians first appeared on the Anatolian plains in the sixth century BC. Eight hundred years later their king became the first ruler to accept Christianity. A first glimpse of the `essential Armenia" is caught during a visit to a famous center for Armenian Studies, the San Lazzaro monastery in Venice (where Armenians had been resident well before the city's rise to commercial and political prominence in the 12th century). According to one of its scholars the unique Armenian script developed by Mesrop Mashtot embodies an idea that can not be explained but only expressed in one word "Ararat", the mountain that is the heart of Armenia.

Marsden continues his quest in Lebanon -- by way of Cyprus -- and poses himself the question how such a mobile nation, consisting of merchants, pilgrims and adventurers, had been able to maintain its distinctiveness. Nowhere better to get a sense of that than in Beirut, which has just emerged from a brutal civil war. Here the Armenians had staunchly stuck to their neutrality but also maintained a basis for their commando-type liberation movements, operating with surgical precision in sixteen countries. Only by tapping into the efficient Armenian network of connections is Marsden able to move swiftly and inconspicuously through Lebanon and Syria. Taking the Baron hotel in Aleppo -- founded and still managed by an Armenian -- as a base camp for explorations into the last surviving Armenian villages of northern Syria, Marsden gives us a chilling account of the ruthlessness with which the Turks perpetrated their ethnic cleansing during the First World War.

From Syria the author moves into Turkey. Using the ancient city of Antioch, which for seven hundred years had been largely populated by Armenians, the ruins of Ani, capital of a long-lost Armenian state, and finally Istanbul as a backdrop, Marsden gives an excellent overview of another Armenian characteristic: their genius for building. No single ethnic group in the Middle East has made so many contributions to architecture as the Armenians. They were employed by Turkish, Persian and Indian rulers alike. Marsden conjectures that they may have been instrumental to the development of Europe's Gothic style with its pointed arch.

The second part of the book takes us to the Balkans. Since the days of the Byzantine empire, subsequent rulers of Asia Minor have used this region to exile unwanted elements. This permits Marsden to launch into one of his favorite topics: arcane religious sects. The reader is provided with a most interesting account of how the doctrine of dualism, which can be traced back to the earlier Persian religions of Manichaeism and Zoroastrianism, forms the origin of many Christian heresies. Marsden has clearly studied this issue thoroughly and makes an Armenian role in the spread of heretical beliefs to western Europe quite plausible.

Traveling through Bulgaria and Romania, Marsden "[..] became aware that the Armenians had been a much greater presence in the Balkans than [..] first imagined." More gaps in the knowledge of this, at first so enigmatic, people are filled. He penetrates deeper into their language and learns about the extent of their trading relations. In the Middle Ages they had already reached Moorish Spain, Poland and the court of the Mongol Khan. By the 18th century Armenians were connected with the Ottoman, Safavid and Moghul courts, had established an influence with Burmese and Ethiopian monarchs, and traded in Amsterdam, Calcutta, Java and Tibet.

Via the Crimea Marsden finally makes it to Armenia proper where the third part of the book is set. Recently wrested away from seventy years of Soviet domination the situation there is still very precarious. During visits to four famous monasteries in the country's northeast, the writer contemplates the so-called "Silver Age", Armenia's last period of brilliance during the eleventh and early twelfth centuries. Buried deep beneath this short period of fervent monastic activity lies Armenia's pre-Christian heritage. This atavistic past is just as much part of the Armenian identity as its unique Christian beliefs.

The book closes with an account of Armenia's more recent tribulations: a devastating earthquake and the war with neighboring Azerbaijan over the region of Karabagh. Witnessing its effects first-hand, Marsden "[..] sensed that here, where the threat was greatest, the Armenian spirit was at its strongest. It was the same spirit that had driven the Armenians through the vast improbability of their history".

"The Crossing Place" establishes Philip Marsden as a worthy successor of Colin Thubron, one of Britain's best travel writers. Not only do the two share an interest in less obvious travel destinations on the Eurasian landmass, visiting people at the fringes of so-called great cultures, but their writings have also a certain style in common; a captivating prose that unfolds the power of the English language and holds the reader's attention until the end.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars too much Thesaurus, too little depth, October 10, 2005

By 

HGtbrd (Tbilisi, Georgia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Crossing Place: A Journey Among the Armenians (Kodansha Globe) (Paperback)

This is a moderately disappointing book. Armenia has a fascinating history, multi-faceted, struggling against adversity and nevertheless producing talented, highly gifted people. So a good book would be necessary to do them justice.

Philip Marsden tries to deliver this, and certainly undertook an effort. He learned Armenian, and traveled through 20 countries, tracing the history of this scattered people. However, as a reader you soon find that distance does not compensate for depth. It is all fairly breathless, a short night spent here, the next night in the next town, or next country. The experiences therefore remain fleeting, rarely reaching any level of insight. In fact, I think you can get pretty much the same information from a Lonely Planet guide, without the distracting personal details thrown in. This is not intrinsic, some of Marsden's other books actually are better in this regard.

The style is fine, but since the substance is so thin, the chiseled descriptions end up being an irritating veneer, a writer straining his Thesaurus, rather than a good storyteller. There are occasional irritating elements: I, for one, no longer want to read about Western travelers turning down hookers in Eastern Europe, we have really heard it before and there is no need for the writer to parade his virtue to readers. It is, I should add, only a small irritation: overall, Marsden comes across as a likable person, which matters in travel writing, since you will follow private experiences.

So, the book is best described as a broad survey of meeting Armenians in many countries, against the backdrop of the collapsing Soviet Union. Given the shortage of good books on Armenia, it may be a last resort. It may serve as a very basic introduction to Armenia. But otherwise, don't expect too much. If you know the region and like Armenia, the book will add little.

I understand that some Armenians feel charmed by the attention, and therefore like the book. I sympathize, but I believe that their people would deserve more depth, and a more reflective understanding. At the same time, I also felt put off by the way Marsden approached Turkey. He essentially walks into Turkey feeling uneasy, and finds confirmation for his sentiments. No big surprise there, and little value added.