The Forty Days of Musa Dagh [Paperback]

Franz Werfel (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1990

This stirring, poignant novel, based on real historical events that made of actual people true heroes, unfolds the tragedy that befell the Armenian people in the dark year of 1915. The Great War is raging through Europe, and in the ancient, mountainous lands southwest of the Caspian Sea the Turks have begun systematically to exterminate their Christian subjects. Unable to deny his birthright or his people, one man, Gabriel Bagradian—born an Armenian, educated in Paris, married to a Frenchwoman, and an officer doing his duty as a Turkish subject in the Ottoman army—will strive to resist death at the hands of his blood enemy by leading 5,000 Armenian villagers to the top of Musa Dagh, “the mountain of Moses.” There, for forty days, in the face of almost certain death, they will suffer the siege of a Turkish army hell-bent on genocide. A passionate warning against the dangers of racism and scapegoating, and prefiguring the ethnic horrors of World War II, this important novel from the early 1930s remains the only significant treatment, in fiction or nonfiction, of the first genocide in the twentieth century’s long series of inhumanities. It also continues to be today what the New York Times deemed it in 1933—“a true and thrilling novel ... a story which must rouse the emotions of all human beings.” “Musa Dagh gives us a lasting sense of participation in a stirring episode of history.... Magnificent.”—The New York Times Book Review “A novel full of the breath, the flesh and blood and bone and spirit of life.”—Saturday Review

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

Editorial Reviews

Review

In every sense a true and thrilling novel. It tells a story which it is almost one's duty as an intelligent human being to read. And one's duty here becomes one's pleasure also. --The New York Times Book Review

Forty Days will invade your senses and keep the blood pounding. Once read, it will never be forgotten --New York Times --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Language Notes

Text: English
Original Language: German

Product Details

• Paperback: 824 pages
• Publisher: Carroll & Graf Publishers (December 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0881846686
• ISBN-13: 978-0881846683
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.2 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,000,397 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

87 of 92 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the finest works ever penned, November 7, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: The Forty Days of Musa Dagh (Paperback)

As a professor of English literature I have read thousands of books, short stories and histories. The Forty Days of Musa Dagh is one of the greatest pieces of literature ever written. It is certainly not as well known as The Great Gatsby or The Grapes of Wrath, and it usually only receives serious study at the university level, but this does not diminish its importance as one of the greatest works of fiction. It is stirring and disturbing, it relentlessly forces the reader to confront visions of the human psyche, of the darkness of evil, and of the power of courage.

How anyone can draw a moral parallel between Werfel's The Forty days of Musa Dagh and Hitler's Mein Kampf (see Holdwater NYC, Sept. 20, 2003, below) is beyond comprehension or scholarship, and tells me that either they did not read the novel, or that they read the novel but did not understand it, or that they understood it but could not stare at it directly because what stared back at them was their own deformed reflection. What Holdwater is engaging in is called sophistry: he wrote twelve horribly written rambling paragraphs and articulated almost nothing.

Having read several books on the Armenian Genocide - most recently The Burning Tigris by Peter Balakian - I notice also that Holdwater conveniently left out any mention of Henry Morgenthau Jr. and Viscount Bryce (Morgenthau being the American ambassador to Turkey during World War One, and Bryce being the British Ambassador to the U.S. until 1913) both very erudite deliberate statesmen who wrote extensively in their memoirs regarding the genocide of the Armenians and the dispositions of Taalat and Enver when confronted with the incomprehensible evil of the crimes they were committing. In addition he omits any mention of the efforts of the American Red Cross during world war one to relieve the suffering of the Armenians, and also fails to mention the hundreds of American, British and French missionaries in Eastern Anatolia during the years 1915 to 1922, many of whom wrote thousands of pages on what they observed.

Is it not even possible Mr. Holdwater that there is just a little tiny bit, perhaps even a sliver - a shred even - of some evidence that at least a tiny genocide may have taken place - considering there is a mountain range of trustworthy evidence that seems to point in this direction? But this is the point of sophistry to get the ball bobbing and bouncing haphazardly back and forth, to inject illogical arguments into the matter that seem logical based on false assumptions, and in so doing reach ridiculous conclusions that distract from the truth.

Another thing that strikes me in Mr. Holdwater's book review is his total lack of compassion and seeping hatred. He does not display even a sense of sadness let alone remorse towards the hundreds of thousands of Armenians who even the Turkish government admits died horrible deaths. The Turkish government's official position is that about 500,000 Armenians died as a result of what they term a "forced migration for their own safety."

This is a great paradox: Holdwater claims to have read a book that is essentially about compassion, yet he himself displays none. Holdwater lastly recommends the reader not to place too much faith in Amazon's "yes" or "no" survey, my recommendation is, don't place too much trust in someone who has probably not read the book they claim to have read, someone who does not seem to possess even a little sympathy towards human suffering.

95 of 103 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Werfel made himself a voice to the world for the Armenians!, April 28, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Forty Days of Musa Dagh (Paperback)

Between 1915 and 1917 1.5 million Armenians were killed in the 20th century's first genocide, and to this day the existing Turkish government still denies any wrong doing!
It is Franz Werfel's merit that he made the world listen to the crying of the Armenian people, which would have been almost forgotten otherwise.
He tells the story of a handful of men being deported to the Syrian desert who - by courage of despair - manage to escape to the mountain Musa Dagh (which means "mountain of Moses") and resisting the flabberghasted superior Turkish soldiers for forty days, until they were discovered and rescued by french war-ships.
When the book was published in 1933 in Germany, Werfel also intended to draw attention to the imminent same fate that the Jews were facing in Germany, but it was in vain. Both, the Nazis and the Turks were outraged, and the book was banned in both countries (in post-war Germany it was published again, of course), but through the English translation it fortunately had become a bestseller already. However: When MGM was planning to make this book a movie, they had to yield to Turkish pressure not doing so! So to this very day there has not been any movie made from this excellent book.

52 of 58 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book should be required reading for every student., June 15, 1999

By 

M. Leo Cooper ([e-mail]) (Arizona) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Forty Days of Musa Dagh (Paperback)

This book should be required reading for every student. Werfel writes an excellent in-depth novel about the genocide of the Armenians in World War I.

What is particularly chilling is that Werfel went on a lecture tour about the book in Germany just before Hitler's ascent to power. This did not prevent the German people from participating in the genocide of the Jews. Apparently, people learn nothing from history, even if forewarned.