“The most impressive thing about The Tenth Parallel is that Eliza Griswold lived to write it. “

That’s how Mark Oppenheimer opens today’s New York Times review of Griswold’s new book which details her seven-year journey along a faith-based fault line running nearly 9,000 miles through Africa and Asia. He continues:

Traveling the latitude that describes the borderland of Islam and Christianity in much of Asia and Africa, where warlords, missionaries, aid workers and profiteers battle for oil as well as for souls, Ms. Griswold dodges attack dogs in Nigeria, leaves an office building in Somalia hours before it is hit by a suicide bomber and departs the Indonesian city of Yogyakarta, on the island of Java, the morning before an earthquake that killed 5,000 people.

Obviously this gives Griswold, both an intrepid journalist and accomplished poet, a unique and broad view of religious and ethnic conflict. She will be sharing that view at 92Y on September 13 with Steve Coll, staff writer for The New Yorker who last appeared here in May 2008 to talk about the Bin Ladens.

» Follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Join our eNews