Product Description

In 1933, the delightfully eccentric travel writer Robert Byron set out on a journey through the Middle East via Beirut, Jerusalem, Baghdad and Teheran to Oxiana, near the border between Afghanistan and the Soviet Union. Throughout, he kept a thoroughly captivating record of his encounters, discoveries, and frequent misadventures. His story would become a best-selling travel book throughout the English-speaking world, until the acclaim died down and it was gradually forgotten. When Paul Fussell published his own book Abroad, in 1982, he wrote that The Road to Oxiana is to the travel book what "Ulysses is to the novel between the wars, and what The Waste Land is to poetry." His statements revived the public's interest in the book, and for the first time, it was widely available in American bookstores. Now this long-overdue reprint will introduce it to a whole new generation of readers. This edition features a new introduction by Rory Stewart, best known for his book The Places In Between, about his extensive travels in Afghanistan.
Today, in addition to its entertainment value, The Road to Oxiana also serves as a rare account of the architectural treasures of a region now inaccessible to most Western travelers, and a nostalgic look back at a more innocent time.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #97555 in Books
• Published on: 2007-05-18
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780195325607
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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About the Author

Robert Byron was born in England in 1905 into a family distantly related to Lord Byron. He attended Eton and Merton College, Oxford, and wrote several travel books before his untimely death in 1941, while serving as a correspondent for a London newspaper during World War II.

Customer Reviews

A classic of travel writing
Please look past the one-star review of the previous reviewer...check out other editions of the book and you'll get a truer picture. Byron was notoriously opinionated but that is what makes the book. If you have delicate sensibilities, you may want to skip this. Byron wasn't comprehensive so you are reading literature here, not a complete guidebook. His strengths were a love of architecture and hatred of hypocrisy.

This edition has the added bonus of a Preface by Rory Stewart, recent author of THE PLACES IN BETWEEN and THE PRINCE OF THE MARSHES, about Afghanistan and Iraq respectively.

My only quibble with this edition is with the photographs. They are printed on the same paper stock as the text. The publisher can do better than this with a classic.

Elegiac travel adventures
To dispose with one of the criticisms leveled at this book below: it was in fact written by a highly cultured man who went to Eton and Oxford during a time when those institutions were at their peaks. If you don't know what "elegiac" means, or have the energy to look it up in a dictionary, you won't like this book. If you're looking for funny stories about how the Yak ate somebody's hat, you will be disappointed. Go read something by a Lonely Planet cretin and be happy. This is a serious work of literature, which is why a man like Paul Fussel wrote the introduction.

For those interested in reading high travel literature, or about the history of Jerusalem, Baghdad, Syria, Afghanistan and Persia, this book is wonderful. Because Byron was a highly cultured man, he doesn't merely relate a catalogue of sights he's seen, people he has met, and things he's done. His memoir is as much a survey of the history and anthropology of the places he visited as it is "travel book." Many of the monuments he visited are victims of savagery, and the lead Afghanistan had over Persia in those days in terms of modernization has been lost, perhaps forever.

Unhampered by unjudgementalism...
Byron had an hysterical knack for seeing right into the souls of the various persons he met on his journeys...it didn't matter who the person was or of what ethnic group or nationality - none were spared the naked opinions of Mr. Byron, and the result is perhaps one of the best books I have read in the last decade. The serious looks at the peoples and places of a part of the world that remains today mysterious and troubled are enlightening when seen in the historical flow. Byron was interested in a type of Islamic architecture that through his writing became known to the West and I hope more appreciated in the lands he traveled.

I urge you to read this book. My copy is a small edition brought out by a now defunct publisher back in the 90s, and I waited about ten years before I got around to reading it. DO NOT take this long! If you are a reader who wants more than just the latest best seller, and you don't shy away from learning - this book is for you!