Mediocre, Trite, and Condescending.

Alev Scott looks good on paper, well educated, young, an 'intellectual' even?

The reality, as evidenced by this book, is that she is yet another of the myriad conformist 'on message' writers peddling the tiresome 'woke' message. This is shoe horned in to her writing at every opportunity to a degree which reeks of the condescension one feels when one is being 'lectured' to by someone who has an inflated opinion of their own ability and importance.

Add to this a barely disguised set of prejudices and factual errors, and we have here, what this publication is, a very mediocre, rather tedious travel book.

Early on, what is noticeable is Scott's penchant for emoting, rather than describing accurately. Part of her shtick is a low level 'victim of political oppression by Erdogan ' narrative, which when one researches it, is swathed in a vagueness which suggests there's been a lot left out of her account.

Later one begins to notice Scott's factual laziness, we are told someone left here to go to "the Monastery of Mount Athos". Which one? There are at least 27 Monasteries on the Athonite peninsula and a myriad of Sketes. Further on , demonstrating that beautifully "western liberal" form of racist condescension, she describes the traditional piety of Armenian Orthodox Christians as "thinly disguised paganism". Based on no evidence at all, she decides that two elderly Armenian worshippers, greeting each other in the traditional Orthodox Christian manner, are attending the religious ceremony for primarily "social" reasons. Faith, worship, and piety, whether Muslim, Christian, or Jewish, are treated like incomprehensible dead relics. Scott carries the agnostic secularism of her rather privileged English social milieu around her like a suit of armour as she travels through a region where faith, worship, and open devotional piety is alive and well, not through ignorance, but very often through conscious rejection of the hollowness of the western liberal values she espouses. It is no accident that virtually every 'local' she discusses matters with are secularist, rather western oriented people, who 'no longer practice' their childhood religious affiliation. To meet so many people in these regions , who "surprisingly" echo the authors prejudices and values, suggests the lazy journalism derived from seeking out voices who will serve the narrative, which I suspect Scott had formed long before she ever put pen to paper.

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