Shadow Of The Silk Road

Back to search results

£8.99

The Shadow of the Silk Road records a journey by Colin Thubron along the greatest land route on Earth. Out of the heart of China into the mountains of Central Asia (Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan), across northern Afghanistan and the plains of Iran and into Kurdish Turkey, Colin Thubron travels from the Tomb of the Yellow Emperor (the Mythic progenitor of the Chinese people) to the ancient Mediterranean port of Antioch, going by local bus, truck, car, donkey-cart, horse or camel. He covers 7,000 miles in eight months - in perhaps the most difficult and ambitious journey he has undertaken in 40 years of travel.

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

One of the trademarks of 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. The themes in Shadow of the Silk Road include different Islams (oppressed in China; fervent in Afghanistan and Iran; cautiously monitored in Uzbekistan); changes (how China was transformed since the Cultural Revolution); contrasts (no cities could be more different than ancient Samarkand and modern Teheran); 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.