Jerusalem

  • Author Simon Sebag Montefiore
  • Narrator John Lee
  • Publisher Orion
  • Run Time 1 day, 1 hour and 29 minutes
  • Format Audio
  • Genre Asian history, History.
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What to expect

Jerusalem is the universal city, the capital of two peoples, the shrine of three faiths; it is the prize of empires, the site of Judgement Day and the battlefield of today's clash of civilizations. From King David to Barack Obama, from the birth of Judaism, Christianity and Islam to the Israel-Palestine conflict, this is the epic history of 3,000 years of faith, slaughter, fanaticism and coexistence.

How did this small, remote town become the Holy City, the 'centre of the world' and now the key to peace in the Middle East? In a gripping narrative, Simon Sebag Montefiore reveals this ever-changing city in its many incarnations, bringing every epoch and character blazingly to life. Jerusalem's biography is told through the wars, love affairs and revelations of the men and women - kings, empresses, prophets, poets, saints, conquerors and whores - who created, destroyed, chronicled and believed in Jerusalem.

Drawing on new archives, current scholarship, his own family papers and a lifetime's study, Montefiore illuminates the essence of sanctity and mysticism, identity and empire in a unique chronicle of the city that many believe will be the setting for the Apocalypse. This is how Jerusalem became Jerusalem, and the only city that exists twice - in heaven and on earth.

Read by John Lee

(p) 2011 Penguin Random House LLC

Critics Review

  • A fittingly vast and dazzling portrait of Jerusalem, utterly compelling from start to finish

    SUNDAY TIMES
  • Astoundingly ambitious and triumphantly epic history of the city

    DAILY TELEGRAPH
  • Outstanding, superbly objective, elegantly written and highly entertaining

    MAIL ON SUNDAY
  • Simon Sebag Montefiore’s history of Jerusalem is a labour of love and scholarship… a considerable achievement… he has a wonderful ear for the absurdities and adventurers of the past… totally gripping… vivid compelling, engaged, engrossing, knowledgeable

    INDEPENDENT
  • Compelling and thought-provoking…Working on an immense chronological and thematic canvas Sebag Montefiore does his subject more than justice. He narrates the terrible history of Jerusalem vividly and graphically… fascinating but ghastly.

    SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
  • It is a gripping read, told with verve and fluency, and explains why Jerusalem, like a living person, has touched the heart of so many cultures, East and West, for so long

    THE TIMES

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