The Forty Days of Musa Dagh - by Franz Werfel (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

"In every sense a true and thrilling novel."--New York Times Book Review

The heroic story of resistance during the Armenian genocide.

When the Turkish government ordered the deportation of Armenians, several villages in the mountains chose not to obey. Instead, they fortified a plateau on the slopes of Musa Dagh and repelled Turkish soldiers and military police during the summer of 1915 while holding out hope that the warships of the Allies would save them.

An international bestseller when first published in 1933, and the first novel in modern times to capture genocide by a state, Franz Werfel's masterpiece brought the world's attention to this devastating crime against humanity and the Armenian people.

Review Quotes

"The Forty Days of Musa Dagh will invade your senses and keep the blood pounding. Once read, it will never be forgotten."

--New York Times

"A faithful and vivid recount of the Armenian genocide and the Musa Dagh community's resistance. But it is more than just a story recounting that particular chapter of history. Before genocide became conceptualized by post-war academics, Werfel first captured the essences of modern state violence with his penetrating perception, and he was able to put his keen observation in the novel. Reading the book will allow readers to gain a more profound understanding of modern state violence and its nature. This timeless classic will retain its relevancy as long as the world is shadowed by the threat of genocide."

--Yale Review of International Studies

"Werfel's book ... did more than the efforts of any diplomat, journalist, or historian to encourage speech about the unspeakable. It arrives today as a timely reminder that savagery thrives in silence."

--Barnes and Noble Review

"A crackling read. Symphonic in its handling of profound themes."

--Booklist

"For Armenians, it remains unique and precious...it's the one work whose urgency and passion keeps the truth of their genocide before the eyes of a world that would prefer to forget about it. For Jewish readers, Werfel's epic about the choice between submitting to the killers or dying on the barricade is still poignant. In several ghettos where the Nazis held Jewish populations before murdering them, The Forty Days of Musa Dagh was passed from hand to hand and became the inspiration--almost the manual--for the sacrificial ghetto risings that followed. Werfel wins an argument with the world's indifference--and wins it crushingly."

--London Review of Books

"In every sense a true and thrilling novel....It tells a story which it is almost one's duty as an intelligent human being to read. And one's duty here becomes one's pleasure also."

--New York Times Book Review

"Werfel expresses his unequivocal admonishment on the subject of genocide through a wise and beneficent character, the Muslim sage Agha Rifaat Bereket who is the first to warn of the atrocities....As the demonic impulse to genocide captivated Werfel's own countrymen, he wrote with an uncanny, intuitive premonition enough to chill the bones of readers for all time. To end with Werfel's immortal words: 'The most horrible thing that had been done was, not that a whole people had been exterminated, but that a whole people, God's children, had been dehumanised.'"

--Bosphorus Review of Books