wished to "turn Carmel into the Musa Dagh of Palestinian Jewry ... We put our faith in the power of the Jewish 'Musa Dagh' and were determined to hold out for at least three to four months." Revised translation James Reidel revised the Dunlop translation by including all of the material previously removed, and this new edition was published in the United States and the United Kingdom, with UK publishing occurring in 2018. Penguin Books did not include the introduction in the UK edition, something Ascherson criticized. Historical notes The Armenian resistance on Musa Dagh lasted, contrary to the book's title, for 53 days. The change of the days by Werfel "called up biblical associations: the flood lasted forty days and nights; Moses spent forty days and nights on Mount Sinai; Israel's time in the wilderness was forty years." Werfel's account of the French navy's role in the evacuation of Musa Dagh in September 1915 is based on official French diplomatic and naval archives that he secured through contacts at the French embassy in Vienna. Those ships that took part are accurately named, and included the French protected cruiser Guichen under Commander Jean-Joseph Brisson and the armored cruiser Jeanne D'Arc under the command of Vice-Admiral Louis Dartige du Fournet, who received a posthumous medal from the French government in October 2010 for his role in transporting the 4,000 people left on the Damlayik to Port Said, Egypt. Werfel's Bagradian was inspired by the town's defense leader, . Unlike Bagradian, however, he survived the siege and moved to Beirut, Lebanon several years after the war ended and lived there for the next 70 years, becoming a doctor and serving in Lebanon's government for several decades as a quiet and shy member of Parliament. Derkalousdian died at the age of 99 in 1986. Film adaptation Objections and obstructions of initial attempts Before The Forty Days of Musa Dagh was published in English, Irving Thalberg of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) secured the film rights from Werfel's publisher, Paul Zsolnay Verlag and had the novel translated for the studio scriptwriters. Despite reservations on the part of legal counsel, who felt such a film would offend the Turkish government, MGM started pre-production work in 1934 and tentatively cast a rising young star named Clark Gable to play Gabriel Bagradian. When reports surfaced in the Hollywood press about the film late in 1934, Turkey's ambassador to the United