Author(s): Franz Werfel

General & World History

The Forty Days of Musa Dagh is Werfel's masterpiece that brought him international acclaim in 1933, drawing the world's attention to the Armenian genocide. This is the story of how the people of several Armenian villages chose not to obey the deportation order of the Turkish government. Instead, they fortified a plateau on the slopes of Musa Dagh and repelled Turkish soldiers and military police while holding out hope for the warships of the Allies to save them. The original English translation by Geoffrey Dunlop has been revised and expanded by translator James Reidel. The Dunlop translation had excised approximately 25% of the original text. The restoration of these passages and their new translation gives a fuller picture of the extensive inner lives of the characters. Reidel has also revised the existing translation to free Werfel's stronger usages from Dunlop's softening of meaning, his censoring of the novel to fit the mores and commercial contingencies of the mid-1930s.