The Chains of Heaven - An Ethiopian Romance

When Philip Marsden first went to Ethiopia in 1982, it changed the direction of his life. What he saw of its astonishing antiquity, its raw medieval Christianity, its extremes of brutality and grace produced in him a restless curiosity, and made him a writer. But Ethiopia at that time was torn apart by civil war. The north, the ancient heartland of the country, was closed off. Twenty years later, Marsden returned. ''The Chains of Heaven'' is the account of a journey deferred. Walking hundreds of miles through a landscape of cavernous gorges, tabletop mountains and semi-desert, he encounters monks and hermits, rebels and farmers, people whose spiritual passions reveal a reckless disregard for the material. He stays in isolated homesteads, climbs to monasteries accessible only by ox-hide rope or by chain. He creates an unforgettable picture of one of the most remote regions left on earth, and explores the ambiguities of a nation and a Church fiercely proud of their independence but also shackled by it. Even more than in his award-winning ''The Spirit-Wrestlers'', Philip Marsden reminds us of what travel narrative can achieve. In spare and glinting prose, ''The Chains of Heaven'' celebrates the ageless rewards of the open road and a people for whom the mythic and the everyday are still inextricably joined.