About this item
Highlights
- To travel the Silk Road, the greatest land route on earth, is to trace the passage not only of trade and armies but also of ideas, religions, and inventions.
- Author(s): Colin Thubron
- 400 Pages
- Travel, Essays & Travelogues
Description
About the Book
In his latest absorbing travel epic, the author of "In Siberia" and "Mirror to Damascus" follows the course--or at least the general drift--of the ancient network of trade routes that connected central China with the Mediterranean Coast.Book Synopsis
To travel the Silk Road, the greatest land route on earth, is to trace the passage not only of trade and armies but also of ideas, religions, and inventions. Making his way by local bus, truck, car, donkey cart, and camel, Colin Thubron covered some seven thousand miles in eight months--out of the heart of China into the mountains of Central Asia, across northern Afghanistan and the plains of Iran into Kurdish Turkey--and explored an ancient world in modern ferment.
Review Quotes
"Moving in a way that's rare in travel literature...Thubron goes to places most other sojourners can't." -- Lorraine Adams, New York Times Book Review
"[Thubron is] intrepid, resourceful . . . and immensely talented . . . a splendid book." -- Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World
"Thubron has done it all, with sparkling grace . . . He is a brilliant brooder, artful in his melancholy." -- San Francisco Chronicle
"An exhausting journey and a marvelous book." -- Harper's Magazine
"A fantastically descriptive writer, Thubron digs through the history of Central Asia...Perfect for vicarious travelers." -- New York magazine
"An illuminating account of a breathtaking journey." -- Booklist
"[An] absorbing travel epic...Thubron's poetic eye still teases out gorgeous subtleties in the panorama."" -- Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"[Thubron] augments his trenchant narrative with impressive historical background and evocative, lyrical prose...An impressive, rewarding...trek." -- Kirkus Reviews
"Splendid...Sumptuously detailed, elegantly written and riveting...Thubron misses nothing." -- Providence Journal