The Forty Days of Musa Dagh
by Franz Werfel
2020-12-30 09:52:52
The Forty Days of Musa Dagh
by Franz Werfel
2020-12-30 09:52:52
The internationally acclaimed novel based on the heroic resistance during the Armenian genocide of 1915. This is the story of how the people of several Armenian villages in the mountains along the coast of present-day Turkey and Syria chose not to ob...
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The internationally acclaimed novel based on the heroic resistance during the Armenian genocide of 1915. This is the story of how the people of several Armenian villages in the mountains along the coast of present-day Turkey and Syria chose not to obey the Turkish governmentâs deportation order. Instead, they fortified a plateau on the slopes of Musa DaghâMount Mosesâand repelled Turkish soldiers and military police during the summer of 1915 while hoping for the Allies to save them . . . Translator James Reidel and scholar Violet Lutz have revised and expanded the original English translation by Geoffrey Dunlop. The Dunlop translation, had excised approximately 25% of the original text to accommodate the Book-of-the-Month club and to streamline the novel for film adaptation. The restoration of these passages and their new translation provide a fuller picture of the charactersâ lives, especially the hero Gabriel Bagradian, his wife Juliette, their son Stephan, and Iskuhi Tomasian. What is more apparent now is the personal story that Werfel tells, informed by events and people in his own life, in which the author, his wife Alma, his stepdaughter Manon Gropius, and others in his circle are reinvented. Reidel has also revised the existing translation to free Werfelâs stronger usages from Dunlopâs softening of meaning, his effective censoring of the novel in order to fit the mores and commercial contingencies of the mid-1930s. âIn every sense a true and thrilling novel . . . It tells a story which it is almost oneâs duty as an intelligent human being to read. And oneâs duty here becomes oneâs pleasure also.â âNew York Times Book Review
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