DROWER (E. S.).
Peacock Angel: Being some Account of Votaries of a Secret Cult and their Sanctuaries.
WITH THE YAZIDIS IN IRAQI KURDISTAN
The author wrote a number of books on the peoples and cultures of Iraq, as E.S. Stevens and then E.S. Drower. In Peacock Angel, she recounts her ‘stay of a spring month’ in the Yazidi village of Baashika.
In the ‘prelude’ she downplays the value of her work, deeming it ‘not a serious contribution to the literature about the sect’. However, her ‘personal impression of day-by-day happenings and friendships’ provides a sensitive and illuminating view of an oft mis-represented and persecuted religious group. One learns much about the festivals, shrines and customs (birth, marriage etc) of the Yazidis.
A recurring feature of the text is the peace Drower experiences, which she contrasts with the anxious atmosphere of British life at the beginning of the Second World War.
Provenance: Bookplate of Archibald B. Roosevelt Jr. (1918-1990) to front pastedown.
