Product Description

THERE IS NOT much to say about this book by way of introduction. It describes an undeservedly successful attempt to travel overland from Peking in China to Kashmir in India. The journey took seven months and covered about 3,500 miles...With masterly understatement Peter Fleming begins this account of what is one of the true epics of adventure. With his companion, Eva Maillart, and motivated largely by curiosity, they set out across a China torn by civil war to journey through Sinkiang to British India. It had been eight years since a traveller had crossed Sinkiang; in between times those who had entered this inhospitable and politically volatile area seldom left alive. This, China's most westerly province, was under the control of a rebel warlord supported by Stalin's Red Army. Within it there was yet further civil war and the southern oases through which Fleming and Maillart had to travel were under the control of yet another rebel force. Entering the province by a little known and almost lethal route and following the path of the Silk Road, they ended up in Kashgar before crossing the Pamirs to India. Beautifully written and superbly observed, this is not simply a superb account of a part of the world few of us will ever see, but also a marvellous insight into the last days of the Great Game, when Britain and Russia still faced each other across a Central Asia in a state of anarchy. It is a magnificent travelogue by one of the last and greatest adventures of Empire.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1565285 in Books
• Published on: 2001-11-23
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 394 pages

Review
'Its entertainment value is immense. It will arouse great fury and cause much pleasure - an epic of adventure' - Harold Nicolson 'It confirmed Fleming's place in the front rank of travel writers... no modern work of travel has given me more pleasure... I have read it more times than I can remember' Daily Telegraph

From the Publisher
9 1.5-hour cassettes

About the Author
PETER FLEMING, THE brother of Ian Fleming, was born in 1907. After a stint on the Spectator as a literary editor he had his first taste of adventure on a trip to South America in the early 1930s. He travelled widely in China during the 1930s, where he reported on the civil war there. During World War II he was involved in intelligence operations around the world. During the 1950s and 1960s he produced a string of works of popular history. He died in 1971.

Customer Reviews

Half a book
Peter Fleming's "News from Tartary" is a classic travel book about trekking through the wilds of Asia. Unfortunately, it has been badly served by this edition; it's overpriced and lacking in quality. It doesn't have the 26 illustrations of the original; it doesn't even have the absolutely necessary map. Reading it is like watching a great movie without sound or captions. Fleming (Ian Fleming's brother, as it happens)would have had a well-turned phrase of damnation had he seen how this edition emasculates the original. I urge you to read the book, but not this way. Go online and buy a used copy of the hardback for not much more (over 50 copies were listed when I checked abebooks.com)and enjoy Fleming's travel saga as it deserves to be enjoyed. I feel cheated; readers should be informed when a reprint edition is, like this one, incomplete. My one star rating is not for the writing--its for this shoddy presentation of a great travel book.

Professionally amateur
This is probably the best travel narrative ever written about China (although Owen Lattimore's 'The Desert Road to Turkestan' is a close second) and has influenced a great deal of subsequent writing about the region--not in content, but in style. Fleming presents himself as a bumbling amateur traveller, a mild eccentric, and someone who has only the vaguest idea what's going on. Later writers, attracted no doubt by the fact that this book has stayed in print for nearly 70 years, have taken this as justification to write narratives which revel in their own ignorance. But Fleming's amateurishness is merely a pose, and the book is full of humorous detail on life in China at that time, backed by sound journalism and knowledge of the political situation. It's also full of perceptive observations on the people he meets and their behaviour, guaranteed to bring a smile to the face of the modern traveller when coming across their latter day counterparts, both Chinese and expatriate foreigner.

A Classic of Travel Writing
I haven't bought this edition yet. I read this while in Nepal and India and loved it. It is one of the finest pieces of travel writing I know of. I rank it with Harrer's "Seven Years in Tibet", Newby's "A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, Thesiger's "Arabian Sands" and Stark's "Valleys of the Assassins." No new-age, PC navel-gazing here: just an honest and humorously-told narrative of an adventurous overland crossing of central Asia in a turbulent time. If you are interested in central Asia, I think this book is a must.