{"product_id":"cleopatras-wedding-present-travels-through-syria-1","title":"Cleopatra's Wedding Present: Travels Through Syria","description":"\u003cp\u003eThough Syria has begun to open itself up to the foreign traveller, for many of us it remains a sinister and forbidding destination. Syria's monumentally unwelcoming state apparatus - and its fraught politics - could defeat even the most determined adventurer. As the idlest and most easy-going of explorers, Robert Tewdwr Moss side-steps danger to luxuriate in Turkish baths and muse on the ironies of life and love. His Syria is also a place of contrasts: from concrete esplanades swept by hot dusty winds and all-seeing electronic eyes, with images of President Assad lined up side by side in surreal massed ranks, to deserted back streets where mud-brick houses collapse into themselves like melted chocolate. He visits the legendary city of Palmyra and stumbles upon a shred of 2000-year-old mummy. After helping to rescue the relics from an ossuary of Armenian massacre-victims, he leaves a bagful of bones on a bus. He is publicly denounced by a paranoid alcoholic London writer and stoned by Saddam-sympathizing youths in Syria's restive eastern provinces. He follows in the footsteps of a 19th-century English lady traveller, and falls hopelessly in love with a Palestinian ex-commando. Robert Tewdwr Moss's Syria is a dour, disturbing land - a place which attracts the oddest characters and where the oddest things happen.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"sb-details\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eGenre:\u003c\/strong\u003e Travel writing, Syria\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFormat:\u003c\/strong\u003e Hardback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePublished:\u003c\/strong\u003e 1998\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 224\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/strong\u003e Gerald Duckworth \u0026amp; Co. Ltd\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eISBN:\u003c\/strong\u003e 9780715628072\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Gerald Duckworth \u0026 Co. Ltd","offers":[{"title":"Standard Secondhand — £1.00","offer_id":47913303474353,"sku":"SB-0715628070-C3","price":1.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0618\/2669\/5345\/files\/0715628070.jpg?v=1789161960","url":"https:\/\/sellbooks.co.uk\/products\/cleopatras-wedding-present-travels-through-syria-1","provider":"Sell Books .co.uk","version":"1.0","type":"link"}