Eothen

Semlin and Belgrade lie less than a cannon-shot apart, yet plague laws make the river between them feel like the edge of the known world. Alexander William Kinglake crosses it with a vulture circling overhead and armed, turbaned strangers waiting on the opposite bank.

In the 19th century, Kinglake leaves the familiar streets of Semlin for Ottoman Belgrade, where the yellow quarantine flag keeps neighboring peoples worlds apart. His crossing is a comic, solemn farewell to Christendom: once he reaches the southern shore, even returning means fourteen days in the lazaretto. Beyond the blank walls, proud porters carry his luggage through silent lanes to the Pasha’s castle, where coffee, pipes and an unfamiliar calm await. But what kind of welcome—and what kind of East—lies beyond the river?

With centuries of literature, it's inevitable that some will fall through the cracks. We hunt down public domain works and restore them so they're not lost to the world.

Who are we? We're Cairn Press. Our background is in design, publishing, typography, and technology. These skills fuel our mission to create the highest quality Public Domain eBooks available online, at an affordable price. We give them the treatment they deserve; our proprietary process restores books for a better overall user experience in design, readability, and e-reader compatibility.