{"product_id":"from-the-holy-mountain-9780006547747","title":"From the Holy Mountain","description":"A rich blend of history and spirituality, adventure and politics, laced with the thread of black comedy familiar to readers of William Dalrymple's previous work.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn AD 587, two monks, John Moschos and Sophronius the Sophist, embarked on an extraordinary journey across the Byzantine world, from the shores of the Bosphorus to the sand dunes of Egypt. Their aim: to collect the wisdom of the sages and mystics of the Byzantine East before their fragile world shattered under the eruption of Islam. Almost 1500 years later, using the writings of John Moschos as his guide, William Dalrymple set off to retrace their footsteps.Taking in a civil war in Turkey, the ruins of Beirut, the tensions of the West Bank and a fundamentalist uprising in Egypt, William Dalrymple's account is a stirring elegy to the dying civilisation of Eastern Christianity.\u003ch2\u003eAbout the author\u003c\/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eWilliam Dalrymple was born in Scotland and brought up on the shores of the Firth of Forth. He wrote the highly acclaimed bestseller \u003cem\u003eIn Xanadu\u003c\/em\u003e when he was twenty-two. The book won the 1990 Yorkshire Post Best First Work Award and a Scottish Arts Council Spring Book Award; it was also shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize. In 1989 Dalrymple moved to Delhi where he lived for six years researching his second book, \u003cem\u003eCity of Djinns\u003c\/em\u003e, which won the 1994 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award and the Sunday Times Young British Writer of the Year Award. \u003cem\u003eFrom the Holy Mountain\u003c\/em\u003e, his acclaimed study of the demise of Christianity in its Middle Eastern homeland, was awarded the Scottish Arts Council Autumn Book Award for 1997; it was also shortlisted for the 1998 Thomas Cook Award, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and the Duff Cooper Prize. A collection of his writings about India, \u003cem\u003eThe Age of Kali\u003c\/em\u003e, was published in 1998.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWilliam Dalrymple is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and of the Royal Asiatic Society, and in 2002 was awarded the Mungo Park Medal by the Royal Scottish Geographical Society for his ‘outstanding contribution to travel literature’. He wrote and presented the television series \u003cem\u003eStones of the Raj\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eIndian Journeys\u003c\/em\u003e, which won the Grierson Award for Best Documentary Series at BAFTA in 2002. He is married to the artist Olivia Fraser, and they have three children. They now divide their time between London and Delhi.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"William Dalrymple","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44273509335101,"sku":"9780006547747","price":21.24,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0597\/7689\/2989\/files\/x1000_db5ffae0-b8f9-4de6-8549-955cd4874b4b.jpg?v=1793667148","url":"https:\/\/www.palmleaf.com.au\/products\/from-the-holy-mountain-9780006547747","provider":"Palmleaf","version":"1.0","type":"link"}