The Hills of Adonis [antikvár]

Preface This four-month walk through the mountains and coasts of Lebanon describes a world irrecoverably gone. Already in 1967 the country's fragile unity was showing strain, and some were saying that the survival of its delicately balanced government into the 1970s would be a miracle. Yet in the spring of 1967 the land was still at peace, and it was possible for a young man {I was twenty-seven) to vanish alone into the mountains. The peoples I found there - Maronites, Druses, Shiites - have since become familiar through press report and atrocity. But in 1967 they existed only as little-known minorities in a quiet nation. As I travelled among them, intoxicated by their country's past, I received only intimations of the storm in the near future. So this journey belongs to a time of innocence - both Lebanon's and mine. Fleetingly it may recapture the beauty of that ravaged country and the people who used to live there in peace. Colin Thubron London, 1986