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Damascus Gate
by Robert Stone
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Touchstone (1999-05-04)
ISBN: 0684859114
EAN: 9780684859118
Dewey Decimal #: 813.54
Paperback: 528 pages
SKU: 6706
Condition: As New
Comments: Binding: Softcover. Condition: As New.
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
On the cusp of the millennium, Jerusalem has become a battleground in the race for redemption. American journalist Christopher Lucas is investigating religious fanatics when he discovers a plot to bomb the sacred Temple Mount. A violent confrontation in the Gaza Strip, a race through riot-filled streets, a cat-and-mouse game in an underground maze -- as Lucas follows his leads, he uncovers an attempt to seize political advantage that reveals duplicity and depravity on all sides of Jerusalem's sacred struggle.Ambitious, passionate, darkly comic, Damascus Gate is not only Robert Stone's biggest and best novel to date, but a timely and brilliant story of belief, power, salvation, and apocalypse.
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Amazon.com Review
In his earlier novels, Robert Stone has taken us to such hot spots as Vietnam, Central America, and that ultimate sinkhole of depravity we call Hollywood. This time around, it's Jerusalem. Given Stone's gift for depicting both political and personal embroilment--indeed, for making the two inextricable--this particular city is an inspired choice. For starters, Jerusalem remains a sacred destination for Muslims, Jews, and Christians and a hotly contested one. It's also a magnet for hustlers, fanatics, and millennial dreamers, a generous assortment of whom populate the pages of Damascus Gate. As always, Stone introduces a (relatively) innocent American into the picture--a journalist named Christopher Lucas. This career skeptic prides himself on his detachment: he prefers the kind of story "that exposed depravity and duplicity on both sides of supposedly uncompromising sacred struggles. He found such stories reassuring, an affirmation of the universal human spirit." Yet Lucas, a lapsed Catholic, has journeyed to Jerusalem at least in part to recharge his devotional batteries. And as he's slowly drawn into a terrorist plot--which involves drugs, arms smuggling, and a plan to blow up the Temple Mount--Lucas sheds his detachment in a hurry. Stone's novel functions as an expert thriller, whose slow, somewhat clunky wind-up is more than compensated for by a brilliant grand finale. It is also, however, a dogged exploration of faith, in which cynics and true believers jostle for predominance. "Life was so self-conscious in Jerusalem," the author reflects, "so lived at close quarters, by competing moralizers. Every little blessing demanded immediate record." It's hard to imagine a more vivid record of these mutual blessings--and maledictions!--than Robert Stone's.
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Customer Reviews
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The Bookschlepper Recommends
Rating  (4)
Date: 2008-07-09
Chris Lucas, American half-Jewish reporter in Jerusalem, agrees to do a book on the pilgrims to the Holy City who become overly inspired. Beyond the characters with Messianic dreams, there is an assortment of misfits, NGO and U.N. workers, former Communists, archeologists, settlers, nightclub impresarios, drug/arms runners and relief worker wannabes. Stone plots a tight scheme for the coming Millennium and corners the reader in a Bermuda Triangle of intifada, religious zealotry and psyche. I could feel the bullets whizzing past.
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masterful work by america's best living novelist
Rating  (5)
Date: 2008-04-17
2 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
first let me state my very strong bias -- Robert Stone is the best practicing novelist in america today. He is a serious novelist in the classic sense, drawing on hemingway and conrad, among others, for inspiration. he also is an embodiment of the 60's generation, one who survived and who has felt and filtered the last 50 years thru his considerable intellect.
yes, this novel requires work on the part of readers. if you want a light read, a beach novel, read grisham or others. (although, in interest of full disclosure -- i did read this on the beach.)
stone has serious business at hand here -- trying to make sense of the religious, cultural and political issues in israel in a way only fiction can. this is powerful stuff. his research is meticulous and i learned a ton. it also does what novels should -- it pushes you, rivets you, makes you feel a range of powerful emotions and when you read the last page, you will pause and stare into empty space for a while. such is the effect.
yes, this novel is dense and complex. but give it time, stick with it and it will reward as much as or more than any novel you have read.
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From page 50 to the end
Rating (5)
Date: 2007-01-12
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
The references are indeed tedious at first, but the novel picks up speed toward the middle, and for me, became compelling. The story is ultimately about believers, non-believers, and seekers. We see characters whose faith (or lack thereof) make them gulible and fanatical or manipulative and self-interested, but Stone never makes us feel that one group is any better than the other. Instead he shows us the fallibility of them all. If life is like a children's story, Robert Stone shows us the "Alice in Wonderland" logic of each perspective - all without scorning the seeker's longing for something more. I'm glad I kept reading.
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Overly detailed and boring
Rating  (1)
Date: 2006-06-29
3 out of 4 customers found this reveiw helpful
With all the great reviews, I thought this would be good, especially as I really enjoyed Children of Light. Instead, the first chapter is one of the most boring I have ever read. I tried it a second time, thinking I missed something. I didn't. I thought it would get better. It didn't. This is one of the most arduous and tedious books I've read, with excessive and boring detail about everything. Unlike many other readers, I stop reading at a certain point if a book doesn't interest me. I stopped at page 50. Others who have reviewed this actually finished it, and then say it was really bad. This book is a good reason to stop at 50.
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Entertaining
Rating (4)
Date: 2006-06-26
Took a bit of work getting past what initially seemed like cliche on journalists in hot spots, travellers, NGO scenes, mysticisms, etc., but turned into an engaging reading once I started to empathize with the characters.
Thought there was a scene early where it hinted that DeKuf was in control, rather than Razi, but maybe I misread?
There were few dopey parts where the author tries to lay heavy with mysticism. Didn't particularly work for me, but then I scanned through them quickly, and don't feel I missed out much.
I'm not much of a fiction reader, but I enjoyed this one.
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