The City Of Abraham (Edward Platt )
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Product details
Edward Platt
Medium Paperback
The City of Abraham is a journey to the heart of the IsraeliPalestinian conflict, and an account of the shared roots of the three great monotheistic religions of the Middle East.
The City of Abraham is a journey through one of the worlds most divided cities Hebron, the only place in the West Bank where Palestinians and Israelis live side by side. It begins with a hill called Tel Rumeida, the site of ancient Hebron, where the patriarch Abraham father of the Jews and the Arabs was supposed to have lived when he arrived in the Promised Land. Through a mixture of travel writing, reportage and interviews, Platt tells the history of the hill and the city in which it stands, and explores the mythic roots of the struggle to control the land.
He meets the Palestinian residents of Tel Rumeida, and the messianic settlers who have made their homes in a block of flats that stands on stilts on an excavated corner of o have attempted to reconstruct the history of the hill. He meets the soldiers who serve in Hebron, and the intermediaries who try to keep the peace in the divided city. The City of Abraham explores the ways in which Hebrons past continues to inform its tumultuous present, and illuminates the lives of the people at the heart of the most intractable conflict in the world.
Hebron, the City of Abraham, is a much bigger, older but grimmer place than Ramallah. The grimness comes, beyond the burdens of occupation, from the aggressive presence of a small Jewish settler community in its midst, and the massive Israeli force which guards them. Behind that lie the rival Jewish and Muslim religious claims to the city's heritage, and the accretion of myth and pseudo-history. The City of Abraham is Edward Platt's very personal attempt to disentangle all that compelling Platt gets up close to the settlers and finds them a strikingly if predictabl6th October 2012
It is almost impossible to exaggerate the importance of the subject, either politically or theologically Platt has no ideological or religious axe to grind This disinterest allows him to listen to all parties soldiers, activists, local Arabs and Jewish settlers his book grows in strength, and in its power to dismay.
Harry Ritchie, The Mail on Sunday, 7th October 2012
This first-rate account blends a study of the history wars over Jewish and Muslim claims on sacred sites with sensitive reports on the experiences of local people, settlers and soldiers.
The i, 11th October 2012
Edward Platt made his name with Leadville, a funny yet forbidding description of the A40 and those living along that traffic-bound thoroughfare. At first glance, his new book, The City of Abraham, couldnt be more different. It is an investigation of the the ancient settlement where Abrahamas Platt fascinatingly shows, is that religious conflict present and past is bound up with the built environment.
Giles Foden, Conde Nast Traveller, August 2012
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