In 2001 Christopher wrote an article for The New York Review of Books that contained a blandly pro-Turkish account of the fate of the Ottoman Armenians. The furious response that this elicited led him to a searching, shameful examination of his sources and his soul. 'I had been charmed by the Turks,' he wrote. 'I had helped to keep Turkey's past hidden.' In 2004, determined to atone, he set off for the mountains of eastern Turkey where for centuries Armenians, Turks and Kurds have killed and died in the name of land and honour. In Rebel Land he tests the limits of historical investigation, telling the story of modern Turkey while conducting a moving enquiry into memory and identity.