The Chains of Heaven

Philip Marsden returns to the remote, fiercely beautiful landscape that has exercised a powerful mythic appeal over him since his first encounter with it over twenty years ago.

‘Ethiopia bred in me the conviction that if there is a wider purpose to our life, it is to understand the world, to seek out its diversity, to celebrate its heroes and its wonders – in short, to witness it.’

When Philip Marsden first went to Ethiopia in 1982, it changed the direction of his life. What he saw of its stunning antiquity, its raw Christianity, its extremes of brutality and grace prompted his curiosity, and made him a writer.

But Ethiopia at that time was torn apart by civil war. The north, the ancient heartland of the country, was closed off. Twenty years later, Marsden returned. The result is this book – the account of a journey deferred.

Walking hundreds of miles through a landscape of cavernous gorges, tabletop mountains and semi-desert, Marsden encounters monks and hermits, rebels and farmers. And he creates an unforgettable picture of one of the most remote regions left on earth. As in his award-winning book ‘The Spirit-Wrestlers’, Marsden reminds us of the brilliant heights that travel writing can attain, whilst celebrating the ageless rewards of the open road and the people for whom the mythic and the everyday are inextricably joined.

Reviews

‘His exhilarating, sometimes burlesque narrative introduces several fascinating characters…Ethiopia provides the questing spirit, as does this thrilling and intelligent book.’ Daily Telegraph

‘He rises above the physical trail to produce short intense vignettes that transport us to a world that few of us will ever see…As both Traveller and Scribe, the best travel writers, like Marsden, hammer out a chain between two worlds: the foreign and the familiar, the present and historical, the journey physical and interior, the road hard travelled and the story well told.’ Sunday Times

About the author

Philip Marsden is the author of ‘A Far Country: Travels in Ethiopia’, ‘The Crossing Place: Among the Armenians’ (which won the Somerset Maugham Award), ‘The Bronski House: A Return to the Borderlands’ and ‘The Spirit Wrestlers: A Russian Journey’ (Winner of the Thomas Cook Travel Book of the Year Award). He is the editor of The Spectator Book of Travel Writing and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. His work has been translated into ten languages.