An international bestseller in hardcover and winner of the ANC Freedom Award, "Rise the Euphrates" is now available in this elegant paperback edition. A contemporary woman's coming of age story, the novel reaches back to 1915 Armenia, when Seta Loon's family is fractured in the Armenian genocide at the hands of the Turks. Two generations later, Seta, the novel's lyrical narrator, must alter her family's legacy. "The daughter assumes what is unfinished in her mother's life," Seta learns. Caught between the generations, between American and Armenian cultures in her Connecticut town, Seta confronts an even fiercer division, the one within herself. The wisdom she gains frees the next generation in Carol Edgarian's stunningly original and ground-breaking novel.

PRAISE FOR RISE THE EUPHRATES

"This is a book whose generosity of spirit, intelligence, humanity and finally ambition are what literature ought to be and rarely is today — daring, heartbreaking and affirmative, giving order and sense to our random lives."
—Washington Post Book World

“A stunning debut—a book that will doubtless haunt its readers as it beguiles them."
—The Miami Herald

"...Vivid, chilling...RISE THE EUPHRATES' richly drawn characters and the haunted voice of the narrator will long remain in readers' memories."
—Robert Stone

"How often do you get to read a book that captures you so entirely and deeply that it controls your days, measures them out and defines them by how long it will be before you can get to your next night's reading? RISE THE EUPHRATES is on of these rare treasures: a work of power, grace, beauty and exquisite tenderness. This book goes beyond the reading experience; it reminds you of your own hopes and terrors. RISE THE EUPHRATES will live for a long, long time in the manner of Wallace Stegner's "Angle of Repose" and Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird."
—Rick Bass

"A novel of extraordinary compassion, it's also a dead-on view of assimilation and the American experience."
—Phoenix Gazette

"The writing is so good it can raise the hairs on your neck."
—Elizabeth Berg, Mademoiselle

A lonely boy's world is touched by the likes of Mr. and Mrs Henry Ford II, his rabbi father, a dying wealthy girl, twins who had both been victims of Dr. Mengele, and a Gypsy prophetess, in a story about a young man's spiritual coming-of-age. A first novel. 20,000 first printing."

Aryeh Lev Stollman's first novel, set in early 1960s Windsor, Canada, is a deep tale of isolation, secrecy, and eventual self-acceptance. Alexander's high-strung mother worries that he spends too much time on his own, a fear that seems almost ironic in view of the family's closed circle. Her best friend, Berenice, and her husband have no children--and Alexander eventually teases out the reason: the Cantor and his twin, Hannalore, were tortured in Auschwitz by Dr. Mengele. Hannalore works across the river in Grosse Pointe, as chief housekeeper for Henry Ford II, and now keeps her religion to herself--to the point of wearing a gold cross. "She once explained to my mother and Berenice, 'When I walk down a street it is only me, old Mademoiselle Hannalore, comprends? and I am practically, deliciously invisible. A happy and contented ghost.'" In fact, none of Alexander's role models are happy, and all are burdened by the Holocaust.

The Far Euphrates is a beautiful, riddling examination of familial pain and fear and religious passion. Alexander's rabbi father uses the Bible to instruct him in language's beauties and complexity: "My father had started reading Genesis with me, slowly, in its original tongue, where the dotted vowels clustered like bees around the honeyed consonants. We read each sentence together, carefully, first in Hebrew, then in English, and finally in German." But Alexander is also aware of language's dangers and religion's rigidity. Later in the novel, following one tragic revelation too many, he has "the unpleasant feeling that even loving words are dangerous." And if words are dangerous, what about the historical and emotional reality they attempt to express? Stollman takes on large subjects in a small, heightened setting. In lesser hands, his quiet opera would descend into melodrama. Stollman doesn't even skirt that possibility.

Discover Syria and Lebanon. Includes FREE planning and background information. Palmyra, Syria’s star attraction, is a sublime sprawling archaeological site, spectacularly set between a lush date palm oasis and a majestic mountain-topped castle, in the middle of a vast emptiness. The Orontes River is to the west and the Euphrates to the east. But the apparent emptiness of the landscape is deceptive. While little could surpass the spectacle of the Palmyra ruins – particularly with a backdrop of the rising or setting sun – the desert of this northeastern region of Syria is dotted with other ancient sites of both archaeological significance and jaw-dropping beauty. Majestic Qala’at Najm dominates a rugged hill jutting into the awesome Euphrates River while the isolated Qasr Al-Heir Al-Sharqi is dramatically sited in a sparse, arid plain.

Discover Syria and Lebanon. Includes FREE planning and background information. Palmyra, Syria’s star attraction, is a sublime sprawling archaeological site, spectacularly set between a lush date palm oasis and a majestic mountain-topped castle, in the middle of a vast emptiness. The Orontes River is to the west and the Euphrates to the east. But the apparent emptiness of the landscape is deceptive. While little could surpass the spectacle of the Palmyra ruins – particularly with a backdrop of the rising or setting sun – the desert of this northeastern region of Syria is dotted with other ancient sites of both archaeological significance and jaw-dropping beauty. Majestic Qala’at Najm dominates a rugged hill jutting into the awesome Euphrates River while the isolated Qasr Al-Heir Al-Sharqi is dramatically sited in a sparse, arid plain.

Printed on Ibis Wove paper in England, bound in buckram, with binding designs, friezes, maps & ornaments . Forest green cover, gilt detailing, maroon cardboard sleeve.

The conflict between the powerful Roman and Iranian empires arising from the extension of Roman power into today’s Middle East is coming into increasingly sharp focus, thanks to the amount of evidence now available. This richly illustrated book examines this evidence to reveal how Rome established itself on the middle Euphrates, in Mesopotamia and Palmyra, and its efforts to consolidate power over these areas.

Reviewing evidence from Palmyra and Dura Europos – two of the most important archaeological sites in the Roman East – Peter M. Edwell builds a picture of the Roman military presence throughout this region. In the process he questions some commonly held assumptions about the nature of the Roman political and military presence at these ancient cities and the region of which they were an important part, forming a fresh and original perspective on the subject.

Studying archaeological evidence from sites covering over 200 kilometres of the banks of the Euphrates River, Lisa Cooper's excellent monograph explores the growth and development of human settlement in the Euphrates River Valley of Northern Syria during the Early and Middle Bronze Ages from circa 2700 to 1550 BC.

Cooper focuses on the nature and development of the urban politics that existed in the area during these periods and highlights two principal inter-related characteristics of the Euphrates Valley:

• the study of specific aspects of Euphrates culture, such as the nature of urban secular and religious architecture, mortuary remains, and subsistence pursuits, to underline the unique character of this region during the Early and Middle Bronze Ages
• the striking resilience of its cultural traditions over many centuries despite the political instability and environmental degradation.

Including studies on the tribal background of the populations, the economy, the unique geography of the Euphrates, the ethnic and social structure of its inhabitants, and the influences of states surrounding it, this is a unique and invaluable resource for all students of archaeology and ancient history.