Overview

Under the Mountainous Sky is Christopher Trillo's account of his and his companions' gruelling and exhilarating journey with donkeys across rural Anatolia, from the Sea of Marmara (almost) in the North to (within sight of) the Mediterranean in the South. The venture is fuelled by their love of Turkey. It is a journey to the rural heart of the country to experience a way of life still, at the time, in 1981, embedded in traditional ways and in symbiosis with nature. The narrative follows the travellers as they cross a magnificent everchanging landscape, through dark forests, and parched plateaus wading through rivers, clambering over mountains. The journey is animated throughout by meetings with villagers, invariably resulting in invitations to eat, to stay, to share stories. Trillo's knowledge of Turkish allows for a deep interaction and understanding of the local people and their experiences, brought to life in vivid and affectionate descriptions. The villagers play a central role in the narrative. Without their support, generosity and local knowledge the journey would have been entirely impossible. And travelling with donkeys provided the travellers instant access to village life. They immediately dispelled any initial suspicion or fear. They activated all the ready hospitality procedures: the food and shelter and good company of the hosts. Without detailed maps, the travellers were also entirely dependent on the villagers for directions. This allowed them to follow rough tracks from village to village, avoiding donkey-hostile main roads. Many of the villages they passed through were inaccessible to motor vehicles and without electricity This is the portrait of a landscape and way of life, unchanged over centuries. Trillo, the academic Stephen Scoffham and the artist Simon Nicholas record a vanishing world in words, photographs, drawings and paintings. The images are beautiful and striking, often startlingly Biblical. The text is sparkling and highly evocative, offering a series of vignettes and descriptions, at times highly comic and at others vividly dramatic. It not only bears witness to the glories and disasters of the journey, but it also presents living portraits of the central characters, both donkey and human, through all their times of stress and elation.

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9781739513344

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Christopher Trillo has a lifelong interest in language and cultures. He studied English Language and Literature, including Old English, at the University of Cambridge and Turkish Language History at SOAS. He has had a career in teaching at all stages, from primary to tertiary, including two periods of residence in Istanbul. He has travelled widely, particularly in Turkic speaking lands and now lives (quietly)(on a park bench) in Sandwich, Kent with his wife and rescued dog. Stephen Scoffham has travelled widely in Europe and Asia. His interest in photography developed at an early age along with his love of places, maps and the environment. On leaving school he travelled with Christopher Trillo overland to India and Sri Lanka. This extraordinary journey, undertaken in the depths of winter, was his first introduction to Turkey and the world beyond the borders of Western Europe. Now a Visiting Reader in Sustainability and Education at Canterbury Christ Church University, UK, Stephen is a school atlas consultant and geography text book author. He gained a PhD in 2001 and was President of the UK Geographical Association (2018-19). Simon Nicholas studied at the Camberwell School of Art in London, receiving a Turkish Government scholarship in 1978. He had a studio in Istanbul from 1978 to 1982. He lives and works in London and Oslo, currently working on paintings of fictional museum and gallery spaces. He has held solo exhibitions in Norway, Sweden, the UK, New York, and the and Maybaum Gallery in San Francisco.

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