Product Description

Shadow of the Silk Road records a journey along the greatest land route on earth. Out of the heart of China into the mountains of Central Asia, across northern Afghanistan and the plains of Iran and into Kurdish Turkey, Colin Thubron covers some seven thousand miles in eight months. Making his way by local bus, truck, car, donkey cart and camel, he travels from the tomb of the Yellow Emperor, the mythic progenitor of the Chinese people, to the ancient port of Antioch—in perhaps the most difficult and ambitious journey he has undertaken in forty years of travel.

The Silk Road is a huge network of arteries splitting and converging across the breadth of Asia. To travel it is to trace the passage not only of trade and armies but also of ideas, religions and inventions. But alongside this rich and astonishing past, Shadow of the Silk Road is also about Asia today: a continent of upheaval.

One of the trademarks of Colin Thubron's travel writing is the beauty of his prose; another is his gift for talking to people and getting them to talk to him. Shadow of the Silk Road encounters Islamic countries in many forms. It is about changes in China, transformed since the Cultural Revolution. It is about false nationalisms and the world's discontented margins, where the true boundaries are not political borders but the frontiers of tribe, ethnicity, language and religion. It is a magnificent and important account of an ancient world in modern ferment.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12725 in Books
• Published on: 2007-07-01
• Released on: 2007-07-03
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 384 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. In his latest absorbing travel epic, Thubron (In Siberia; 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, traversing along the way several former Soviet republics, war-torn Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey. The author travels third-class all the way, in crowded, stifling railroad cars and rattle-trap buses and cars, staying at crummy inns or farmers' houses, subject to shakedowns by border guards and constant harassment—even quarantine—by health officials hunting the SARS virus. Physically, these often monotonously arid, hilly regions of Central Asia tend to go by in a swirl of dun-colored landscapes studded with Buddha shrines in varying states of repair or ruin, but Thubron's poetic eye still teases out gorgeous subtleties in the panorama. Certain themes also color his offbeat encounters with locals—most of them want to get the hell out of Central Asia—but again he susses out the infinite variety of ordinary misery. The conduit by which an entire continent exchanged its commodities, cultures and peoples—Thubron finds traces of Roman legionaries and mummies of Celtic tribesmen in western China—the Silk Road becomes for him an evocative metaphor for the mingling of experiences and influences that is the essence of travel. (July 3)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine
Colin Thubron has spent a lifetime exploring Asia, and he displays his significant regional knowledge and experience in Shadow of the Silk Road. Universally acknowledged as one of our best living travel writers, Thubron brings to this book the astute perception for which he is known and the beautiful prose style he has honed for more than 40 years; what is even more impressive, however, is the incredible sense of enthusiasm he brings both to his journey and to his writing. As Jonathan Yardley wrote in the Washington Post, "Colin Thubron [is an] intrepid, resourceful and immensely talented writer who has made a career out of going to out of the way places and then writing brilliantly about them." Shadow of the Silk Road is Thubron at his best.
Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

From AudioFile
Jonathan Keeble gives a superb reading of this captivating account of a 7,000-mile, eight-month journey from Xian, China, to Antioch, Turkey, along the ancient silk route. Traveling by foot, camel, taxi, truck, train, and cart, Thubron sleeps in yurts, mud huts, vermin-infested inns, and six-bunk train compartments as he traces the routeÕs history and encounters its present. Speaking Mandarin, Russian, and English, he talks with a colorful array of locals belonging to many countries, tribes, clans, and religious groups. Keeble captures the conversations vividly and paces the reading so that listeners hear every exhausted step, rail at each bribe-hungry petty bureaucrat, and thrill to the magnificence of the scenery. An amazing adventure, expertly told. R.E.K.Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Customer Reviews

Travel and thoughts on a vanishing world
Colin Thubron's vivid and very well written descriptions make us think about the complexity of Asia. His book is not just the report of a long journey, but also a valuable contribution for us to understand better the humankind. A perfect combination of realistic reports, history and culture. Thubron meets real people, talks about the past and also about the present, sometimes painful, of their vanishing way of life.

A dangerous journey
Thubron engages in a three-part spiritual and physical quest to recapture the commercial highway of the Silk Road from China through Central Asia and Iran to Turkey. Along the route, he at length describes its history, archeology, myths, religions, and people, all of which in their genetic and cultural blending defy today's current political boundaries. Like beautifully glinting faience or tile are the remnants of its glorious past, if one follows a trail to search them out. In this quest, Thubron scales sheer cliffs with his fingernails and his determination and treads through villages and along rivulets to recover past civilizations' artistic glories peeking out in murals, tiles, minarets, chiseled caves, etc. His quest subjects him to risks to life and limb during the Chinese SARS epidemic and the danger of thieves and guards in Afghanistan and the Oxus. However, he is experienced in his knowledge of languages and in his former travel to the region twelve years ago during Soviet control. His great knowledge of history (political, religious, mythical) provides many facts and surprises to the reader, such as the longest epic being the MANAS rather than the ODYSSEY. His knowledge of the cities through which he passes and his conversations with the people who live there now is what the book is about. One of the most interesting stories is his proscribed admittance to a Moslem shrine, sometimes hiding himself to escape detection, or pressed forward among crowds, or tugged gently along as a guest (pp 264-67, 270-72). Another good story set in Tehran interviews an artsy youth with a film (pp. 284-93). In Maragheh, an inflamed abscess is a four-hour suspenseful ordeal with dentists who cannot communicate orally with him. Not least either is his surpise visit to an English language college in Tabriz where he converses with a class of female students. All of these interviews, histories, myths, and descriptions of places that few if any outsiders would now travel to, over the once crowded highway bearing silk, printing, and other goods and ideas between the Pacific and the Mediterranean, make a memorable and necessary story.

Shadow of the Silk Road
Another great travel adventure By Colin Thurbon. I felt transported along with Thurbon as he tranversed the Silk Road. His references to past trips as well as history, provoked a need to research more about this part of this world. An excellent book. A must for those interested in China, Central Asia and World History.