The Forty Days of Musa Dagh

by Franz Werfel, Geoffrey Dunlop (Translator), James Reidel (Translator)

Overview

The internationally acclaimed novel based on the heroic resistance during the Armenian genocide of 1915.

This is the story of how the people of several Armenian villages in the mountains along the coast of present-day Turkey and Syria chose not to obey the Turkish government’s deportation order. Instead, they fortified a plateau on the slopes of Musa Dagh—Mount Moses—and repelled Turkish soldiers and military police during the summer of 1915 while hoping for the Allies to save them . . .

Translator James Reidel and scholar Violet Lutz have revised and expanded the original English translation by Geoffrey Dunlop. The Dunlop translation, had excised approximately 25% of the original text to accommodate the Book-of-the-Month club and to streamline the novel for film adaptation. The restoration of these passages and their new translation provide a fuller picture of the characters’ lives, especially the hero Gabriel Bagradian, his wife Juliette, their son Stephan, and Iskuhi Tomasian. What is more apparent now is the personal story that Werfel tells, informed by events and people in his own life, in which the author, his wife Alma, his stepdaughter Manon Gropius, and others in his circle are reinvented. Reidel has also revised the existing translation to free Werfel’s stronger usages from Dunlop’s softening of meaning, his effective censoring of the novel in order to fit the mores and commercial contingencies of the mid-1930s.

“In every sense a true and thrilling novel . . .  It tells a story which it is almost one’s duty as an intelligent human being to read. And one’s duty here becomes one’s pleasure also.” —New York Times Book Review

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781567925159
Publisher:	David R. Godine, Publisher
Publication date:	12/18/2020
Series:	Verba Mundi International Literature Series
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	914
Sales rank:	612,026
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Franz Werfel was one of Austria’s most renowned writers at the end of the 1920s. In the 1930s, however, the humanist, anti-genocide stance he expressed in works such as The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, as well as his Jewish heritage, attracted the censure of the Nazis. His books were among the many that were burned amidst accusations of conspiracy and decadence. In 1940, Werfel fled to the United States via France and Spain and settled in Los Angeles.

Table of Contents

	Introduction	ix
Book 1	Coming Events
1.	Teskere	3
2.	Konak--Hamam--Selamlik	22
3.	The Notables of Yoghonoluk	41
4.	The First Incident	65
5.	Interlude of the Gods	123
6.	The Great Assembly	152
7.	The Funeral of the Bells	236
Book 2	The Struggle of the Weak
1.	Life on the Mountain	295
2.	The Exploits of the Boys	338
3.	The Procession of Fire	395
4.	Sato's Ways	483
Book 3	Disaster, Rescue, the End
1.	Interlude of the Gods	529
2.	Stephan Sets Out and Returns	566
3.	Pain	612
4.	Decline and Temptation	637
5.	The Altar Flame	679
6.	The Script in the Fog	754
7.	To the Inexplicable in Us and Above Us!	811
	List of Characters	819
	Glossary of Armenian and Turkish Terms	821

Editorial Reviews

The Forty Days of Musa Dagh will invade your senses and keep the blood pounding. Once read, it will never be forgotten.”—The New York Times

“A crackling read. Symphonic in its handling of profound themes, respectful of its most vacillating characters, Werfel’s novel is a grand and satisfying story about the necessities and difficulties of leadership.”—Booklist

From the Publisher