Shadow of the Silk Road | 
| Author: Colin Thubron
Publisher: HarperCollins
Category: Book
List Price: $25.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  20 reviews
Sales Rank: 12504
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 384
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.4
ISBN: 006123172X
Dewey Decimal Number: 915.8
EAN: 9780061231728
ASIN: 006123172X
Publication Date: July 1, 2007
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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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 15 more reviews...
 Travel and thoughts on a vanishing world July 22, 2008
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 July 2, 2008
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 May 5, 2008
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.
 Slogging along in the Shadows of the Silk Road March 8, 2008
7 out of 10 found this review helpful
Barren landscapes, indigenous people desperate to leave; temples and monuments crumbling in ruin and the author covers it all in three hundred and forty four pages of barren text leaving the reader desperate to leave the book. Traveling the Silk Road could have been a fascinating adventure but this book offers no insight, portrays no curiousity as to why things are they way they are and if you can make it to the end of the journey you have endured!There are numerous better sources of first hand accounts of adventure travel in these regions. It is simply too hard to find kind words, a compliment, or a recommendation for this book.
 Good, but not great January 26, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
I bought this book hoping to get a good idea of what the people and places are like along The Silk Road. This book has some very interesting interviews with people along the way, but after a while, it these become less frequent and the book is more about "I came here and saw this. It looked like this. It made me feel like this, then I left and went here." I could have bought another book with pictures of the Silk Road and been better off in this regard. To me, the best part of the book was what he learned talking to people. Unfortunately, that makes up only a small part of his journey.
Not a bad book, and I don't have regrets buying it, but I did start to look forward to finishing it so I could move on to the next one.
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