|
|
Meander: East to West Along a Turkish River (Chatto, London/Bloomsbury, NY, 2012)
The course of the Meander is so famously indirect that the river's name has come to signify digression - an invitation Jeremy Seal wholeheartedly embraces while travelling the length of it in a one-man canoe. At every twist and turn of his journey, from the Meander's source in the uplands of Central Turkey to its mouth on the Aegean Sea, Seal illuminates his account with a wealth of cultural, historical and personal asides.
It is a journey that takes him from the stamping ground of such illustrious adventurers as Alexander the Great and the Crusader Kings to the great port city of Miletus, home of the earliest Western philosophers - but Seal also encounters a rich assortment of characters on the cusp of change. Above all, this is the story of a river that first brought the cultures of East and West into contact - and conflict - with one another, its banks littered with the spoil of empires, the marks of war, and the detritus of recent industrialisation.
Epic, intimate and insightful, Meander is a brilliant evocation of a land between two worlds.
Reviews of Meander
'Success and enjoyment in this book spring from the fact that Seal is equally at home in the past as the present... his great ability here is to convey something of the lives, the concerns and the nature of the people of the region'.
- Anthony Sattin, The Spectator
'Meander is an excellent introduction to Turkish history for anyone planning a summer holiday.' - Sara Wheeler, the Guardian
'A highly enjoyable and fascinating account of a country caught between Europe and Asia'. - welovethisbook.com
Click on these publications to read the reviews in the Guardian, Kirkus Review, www.longitudebooks.com and www.welovethisbook.com. Click here to read an extract from Meander in the Daily Telegraph.
'Success and enjoyment in this book spring from the fact that Seal is equally at home in the past as the present... his great ability here is to convey something of the lives, the concerns and the nature of the people of the region'.
- Anthony Sattin, The Spectator
'Meander is an excellent introduction to Turkish history for anyone planning a summer holiday.' - Sara Wheeler, the Guardian
'A highly enjoyable and fascinating account of a country caught between Europe and Asia'. - welovethisbook.com
Click on these publications to read the reviews in the Guardian, Kirkus Review, www.longitudebooks.com and www.welovethisbook.com. Click here to read an extract from Meander in the Daily Telegraph.
