- Paperback: 304 pages
- Publisher: Oneworld Publications (2 Mar 2011)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1851688269
- ISBN-13: 978-1851688265
- Product Dimensions: 21.4 x 13.6 x 2.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 682,592 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
The Gendarme
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £0.25
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in The Gendarme for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £0.25, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Product details |
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
'A story that probes a timeless array of life's general adversities: the tricks of memory that enable us to carry on with our daily existence; the brash decisions and subsequent regrets of the young; the ever present need for forgiveness; the way a single event can be subject to many interpretations.' --The New York Times
'Mustian writes relentlessly, telling his haunting story in brief bursts of luminous yet entirely unsentimental prose and reminding us that, when life gets bloody, we had better watch out for our own humanity.' --Library Journal
'Mustian writes relentlessly, telling his haunting story in brief bursts of luminous yet entirely unsentimental prose and reminding us that, when life gets bloody, we had better watch out for our own humanity.' --Library Journal
Product Description
In this extraordinarily haunting, deeply moving novel, an old man comes face-to-face with the horrors of his past, and sets out to find the love of his life and beg her forgiveness. To those around him, Emmet Conn is a ninety-two-year-old man on the verge of senility. Now, at the end of his life, he suddenly finds himself tormented by dreams of a march across a foreign land, of appalling acts of cruelty, and the anguish of a lost love. But these are no dreams and he is no prisoner. The Gendarme is a unique love story that explores the power of memory, and the ability of people, individually and collectively, to forget. Depicting how love can transcend nationalities and politics, how racism creates divisions where none truly exist, and how the human spirit fights to surviveeven in the face of hopelessness, this is a superbly transcendent novel.
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The Gendarme explores how the memory can play tricks on the mind, suppressing painful memories until it's ready to confront them.
The story begins with the 92-year-old Emmett Comm, a First World War veteran, who has been diagnosed with a brain tumour and is suffering from terrible dreams. Only they are not dreams. As everyone around him thinks that he is just becoming old and senile, Emmett begins to realise that his `dreams' are flashbacks from an earlier time in his life.
Emmett is horrified as he becomes aware that he was one of the Gendarmes on the Ottoman army in charge of hundreds of Armenian refugees on a death march in 1915. In his visions he is an inhuman monster, completely unsympathetic to his charges' plight. The descriptions of the brutal treatment endured by the Armenians as they stumble across a barren landscape where there was very little food and water are vivid and painful.
As the visions get stronger, Emmett has powerful physical reactions to them that detrimentally affect his current life. He literally becomes imprisoned by his memories. Eventually, he begins to remember a striking girl in the caravan, a girl with one brown eye and one blue. Through his relationship with her he discovers his humanity and the way he behaves towards the people in his care alters.
This wonderful book demonstrates how changing the perspective of one individual, in this case Emmett, can alter the fate of many others. It also explores whether Emmett can accept and forgive himself for the person that he was in the war.
The story begins with the 92-year-old Emmett Comm, a First World War veteran, who has been diagnosed with a brain tumour and is suffering from terrible dreams. Only they are not dreams. As everyone around him thinks that he is just becoming old and senile, Emmett begins to realise that his `dreams' are flashbacks from an earlier time in his life.
Emmett is horrified as he becomes aware that he was one of the Gendarmes on the Ottoman army in charge of hundreds of Armenian refugees on a death march in 1915. In his visions he is an inhuman monster, completely unsympathetic to his charges' plight. The descriptions of the brutal treatment endured by the Armenians as they stumble across a barren landscape where there was very little food and water are vivid and painful.
As the visions get stronger, Emmett has powerful physical reactions to them that detrimentally affect his current life. He literally becomes imprisoned by his memories. Eventually, he begins to remember a striking girl in the caravan, a girl with one brown eye and one blue. Through his relationship with her he discovers his humanity and the way he behaves towards the people in his care alters.
This wonderful book demonstrates how changing the perspective of one individual, in this case Emmett, can alter the fate of many others. It also explores whether Emmett can accept and forgive himself for the person that he was in the war.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
So little has been written (at least as fact told through fiction) about this other awful travesty - the Armenian Genocide. Over a million Armenians were viciously slaughtered, starved or marched to death. They were men, women, children, the elderly and babies. This book deals with a death march. An elderly man in the throes of an illness, has what he thinks are dreams about a girl that he encountered whilst seemingly a gendarme of the Turkish army. He had suffered memory loss during the First World War as a young man, and had married his nurse, an American, and hence wound up living in America and reinventing himself. However, during these 'dreams' that he is having he starts to realise that they are in fact memories finally returning to him of atrocities that he has committed but also of his love of a girl he was herding across the country on a death march from Turkey to Syria. His love of Araxie juxtaposes against the violence and ugliness. He becomes her protector. This is an immensely moving story of love, forgiveness, guilt and redemption. There is no doubt that huge atrocities take place all over the world under the guise of wars. For those wanting to further their knowledge of this tragedy 'The Burning Tigris' by Peter Balakian would be a good place to start.
Format:Kindle Edition
I enjoyed this book, but unfortunately the ending was rather "soap-opera style" and almost felt like the writer was rushing to finish the book! Otherwise quite well written (up to the last few chapters).
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
