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Title details for The Tree of the Doves by Christopher Merrill - Available

The Tree of the Doves

by Christopher Merrill
ebook
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"A unique travelogue" that "explores the nature of terror, its place in the post-9/11 world and how it unites and galvanizes those in the throes of it" (Kirkus Reviews).
Using several ageless questions—"Where do we come from? Where are we going? What shall we do?"—as his point of departure, journalist and award-winning poet Christopher Merrill explores the related issues of terror, modernity, tradition, and epochal transformation. In three extended essays, Merrill observes the performance of a banned ritual in the Malaysian province of Kelatan; traces Saint-John Perse's epic voyage from Beijing to Ulan Bator in 1921 and relates it to the China of today; and embarks on a trip across the Levant in 2007 in the wake of the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Merrill asserts that it is in this trinity of human actions—ceremony, expedition, war: all devised to keep terror at bay—that history is formed, and that the technological, political, environmental, and social changes we are witnessing now presage the end of one order and the creation of another.
"Merrill is a 'writer's writer': he spins sentences made of gold." —Publishers Weekly
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Publisher: Milkweed Editions

Kindle Book

  • Release date: October 5, 2021

OverDrive Read

  • ISBN: 9781571318404
  • Release date: October 5, 2021

EPUB ebook

  • ISBN: 9781571318404
  • File size: 956 KB
  • Release date: October 5, 2021
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Formats

Kindle Book
OverDrive Read
EPUB ebook

subjects

Essays Politics Travel Nonfiction

Languages

English

"A unique travelogue" that "explores the nature of terror, its place in the post-9/11 world and how it unites and galvanizes those in the throes of it" (Kirkus Reviews).
Using several ageless questions—"Where do we come from? Where are we going? What shall we do?"—as his point of departure, journalist and award-winning poet Christopher Merrill explores the related issues of terror, modernity, tradition, and epochal transformation. In three extended essays, Merrill observes the performance of a banned ritual in the Malaysian province of Kelatan; traces Saint-John Perse's epic voyage from Beijing to Ulan Bator in 1921 and relates it to the China of today; and embarks on a trip across the Levant in 2007 in the wake of the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Merrill asserts that it is in this trinity of human actions—ceremony, expedition, war: all devised to keep terror at bay—that history is formed, and that the technological, political, environmental, and social changes we are witnessing now presage the end of one order and the creation of another.
"Merrill is a 'writer's writer': he spins sentences made of gold." —Publishers Weekly
Expand title description text
Essays Politics Travel Nonfiction