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TJ Gorton
T.J. (Ted) Gorton came early to Oriental studies, spending formative years in Turkey where his father was the US military attaché, and studying at the American University of Beirut in the 1960's. H...view moreT.J. (Ted) Gorton came early to Oriental studies, spending formative years in Turkey where his father was the US military attaché, and studying at the American University of Beirut in the 1960's. He later took a doctorate in Arabic Studies from Oxford and lectured at St. Andrews University, from where he was lured away to Arabia, spending 25 years in the oil business before returning to his first love, Arabic poetry. He has published extensively on Hispano-Arabic poetry in scholarly journals as well as preparing two collections, Andalucia and Arabia, for Eland's Poetry of Place series.Ted says the book he co-authored with his wife Andree Feghali Gorton, Lebanon: through writers' eyes, was a special labor of love. He came to Beirut for the first time in 1967, just after the 6-Day War, and fell in love with the beauty of the country and the rich history that left so many fascinating monuments and cultural legacies.One of Ted's latest books is Renaissance Emir: a Druze Warlord at the Court of the Medici, a biography of the mysterious Levantine prince Fakhr ad-Din Ma'n. This was published by Quartet Books, London in 2013; you can read more about it on Ted's website http://tjgorton.wordpress.com/.Renaissance Emir has been favourably reviewed, most recently by the Times Literary SupplementNow Ted has published his first novel: Only the Dead: a Levantine Tragedy. Set in Aleppo and the Levant during the tumultuous days of World War II, and based in part on a true story, it recounts the life of Vartan, a young Armenian caught up in the Ottoman Empire's plan to destroy the historic Armenian community in Eastern Anatolia. His involvement with British Intelligence costs his family dearly, and he sets out on a quest for revenge, with horrifying results. He then searches for the girl he fell in love with during a mountaintop siege of six Armenian villages, and this quest alternates with vignettes of him as an old man, alone in a crumbling palace in Beirut as another war rages around him. He finds solace in classical Persian poetry shared with his best friend, a cynical Iranian writer and free-thinker.view less