Rating: 
Summary: Thank you for your assistance
Review: To: Amazon.comDear Sir, I am the Chinese translator of this wonderful book "The Crossing Place", and the Chinese editon has been published in Taiwan by Marco Polo Publishing Co., in Oct, 1998. I like this book very much, and hope to make contact with Mr. Philip Marsden and send him a copy of the Chinese Editon. I do appreciate if you can forward this message and my email address to Mr. Marsden. Thank you for your assistance with this matter. Best regards, Ming-hua Cheng
Rating: 
Summary: Subjective is a good word.
Review: While I truly applaud Mr. Marsden in undertaking this incredible journey and doing so much to dig so deep into a culture, I coulnd't help but be effected by some of the implications he makes in his book in relation to Turks and Turkey in general. Of course this is a document of his own PERSONAL feelings and experiences in the journey which are richly written, but... had I not known any better I would walk away from this book feeling somewhat of a hatred for Turks. What bothers me is the way he accomplishes this by playing loose and fast with facts and alluding to things without saying them directly. The books opens with him in Eastern Turkey chancing upon an abadoned Armenian village and a Turkish shephard. Marsden finds a bone and then asks the shephard about the village. The shepard barks "Ermeni", grabs the bone and throws it to his dogs. Without stating it directly he opens the book "saying" that Turks are glad the Armenians are gone, still hate them, feed their bones to their dogs, and are barbaric. Whether the bone was or was not human or even Armenian for that matter he doesn't say, nor whether or not the man was angry because he hates Armenians, is annoyed by a nosey British man interrupting his solitude, or for any number of reasons he doesn't say either. Either way his aim at the start of the book seems clear. Later he says that he meets a man in a mosque in Edirne. The man asks what he is doing in Turkey and Marsden says he tracing out the Armenians. Marsden then asks the man what he does and the man says he's a cop. Again, this is told in such a way as to imply that perhaps some kind of secret Turkish police is following him around, not that it is a chance encounter with a man in a mosque who simply answers his quesiton about what his job is. He refuses to even once refer to Istanbul by any other name than Constantinople. He offers no historical background to the genocide (although a plethora of history elsewhere) which again gives the impression of it just happening out of nowhere due to Turkish barbarity. He even states that he's glad to leave Turkey finally as it is a place "neither East nor West"; this is a very surprisingly superficial view coming from someone so well traveled and who seems to look into everything else so deeply around him: where he is not content with superficial information on Armenians and goes to great lengths to get to the bottom and truth of this information, he seems totally content with accepting and furthering completely superficial information and views in relation to Turks. I am not here to debate about the genocide and related issues nor to defend Turkey, but I do want to point out what I feel to be a "message" in the book. Due to these inbalances in the book at the end it seems to come off as too one-sided and almost irresponsible: yes he has done a wonderful job bringing to light a small, important, and beautiful culture, but at the cost of sidlining and de-humanizing another. Having been to Armenia and currently living in Turkey myself I agree with another reviewer's comment of Turks and Armenians having more in common than they might want to admit. If Marsden is truly commited to the Armenian cause then he would do good to be more aware of the effects his book might have in furthering the Turkish-Armenian rift. Again it's a great travel book, but be wary of it's implied politics.
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