The history of Cyprus offers a reflection of larger world history. Coveted by a succession of foreign powers, it has been repeatedly occupied: the Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, crusaders, Venetians, Genoese, Ottomans, and British have all left their mark on this Mediterranean island. Alongside the Roman and early Byzantine ruins of Salamis, other impressive monuments date from the Frankish and Venetian times, including the Abbey of Bellapais; the fortified harbor of Kyrenia; the magnificent cathedrals of Nicosia; and Famagusta, the setting for Shakespeare’s Othello.

In The Geckos of Bellapais, Joachim Sartorius shares the cultures and legends, colors and lights of the Levant. He explores the island’s history—including its division after the Turkish invasion of 1974 and the difficulties that followed. A revealing exploration of Cyprus after the Turkish partition and an evocative account of one poet’s life on one of the most beautiful islands in the Mediterranean, this book belongs among the world’s best travel writing.

It is 2003, and Paul Arimond is serving as a paramedic in Afghanistan. The twenty-four-year-old has no illusions of becoming a hero. Rather, he has chosen the army to escape the tragedies of his past and his own feelings of guilt. As a result, he finds himself in the same land, now war-torn, where an ancestor of his, Ambrosius Arimond, a late eighteenth-century traveler and ornithologist, once explored and developed the theory of a universal language of birds.

As visceral horrors and everyday banalities of the war threaten to engulf Paul, he, like his great-great-grandfather, finds his very own refuge in Afghanistan’s natural world. In a diary filled with exquisite drawings of birds and ruminations on the life he left behind, Paul describes his experiences living with two comrades who are fighting their own demons and his befriending of an Afghan man, Nassim, as well as his dreams of escaping the restrictive base camp and visiting the shores of a lake visible from the lookout tower. But when he finally reaches the lake one night, he finds himself in the midst of a chain of events that, with his increasingly fragile state of mind, has dramatic—and ultimately heartbreaking—consequences.

A meditative novel that shows a new side to the conflict in Afghanistan, The Language of Birds takes a moving look at the all-too-human costs of war and questions what it truly means to fight for freedom.
 

Off the coast of Istanbul, in the Marmara Sea, lie the Princes Islands, an archipelago of unusual natural beauty, which has long been considered the maritime suburb of the imperial capital on the Bosporus and effectively shaped by its manifold history. The poet Joachim Sartorius draws a loving portrait of the landscape and the light, the political observer Sartorius describes the microcosm, which was always a reflection of Istanbul-Constantinople-Byzantium, while the novelist Sartorius introduces us to the characters, who inhabit this time capsule.

For the Austrian poet and novelist Rainer Maria Rilke, travel was not only integral to his work, it was a way of life. Venice stands out as a location of particular importance to Rilke, and he visited the city ten times between 1897 and 1920. This city has inspired countless writers and artists, but Rilke, both enthralled and provoked by it, reveals a striking and deeply felt love for the city. He was as eager to explore the city’s underbelly, its deserted shipyards and back alleys, as he was to experience its iconic sights of St. Mark’s and the Doge’s Palace. Staying in both simple guesthouses and the grand palaces of his patrons, Rilke would walk prodigiously. His contemporary Stefan Zweig commented that “knowing every last corner and depth of the city was his passion” and Rilke himself said his walking allowed him to “grasp the whole breadth of the city.”

In eleven walks, Birgit Haustedt guides readers through Venice following the poet’s footsteps. Haustedt invites us to look on the beloved sights of the city through Rilke’s eyes, offering a new vision of this famed destination. Rilke’s Venice provides new insight into one of the finest and most widely recognized writers of the twentieth century. It also acts as a literary travel companion and guidebook to Venice, offering eleven detailed maps of walks through the city.