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 enlarge | Author: Colin Thubron
Publisher: HarperCollins
Category: Book
List Price: $25.95
Buy New: $4.99
You Save: $20.96 (81%)
New (45) Used (19) Collectible (2) from $4.99
Rating:  24 reviews
Sales Rank: 133269
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
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 The Blood Stained Road December 31, 2007
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Once again, I travel the Silk Road but this time as an armchair traveler. Thubron has created a literary landscape that makes my sedentary journey as colorful and captivating as my travels in 1993.
Thubron's account of the Silk Road is a literary treasure. Throughout his narrative I found myself caught somewhere between being captivated by his perceptive observations, which were seldom judgemental yet always intensely personal and enthralled by his pictorial prose, laden with metaphor and similie.
What makes Thubron's book different from other travel writings is the mystery that is conveyed. Other writers describe what can be seen, Thubron gives us a picture of what no longer exists; the unseen. So much of the Silk Road lays in ruins or lies buried. So many obscure civilizations were brutally leveled with few, if any remnants remaining. Thubron resurrects the conquerers who obliterated the once bustling metropolises: Qin Shi, Tamerlane, Genghis Khan, and Hasan-i-Sabah. He makes them accountable, not for what remains but what they destroyed and took away. Then he explores what might have been with the rationale of an historian and geographer. The Silk Road transcends from a geographical route and is vividly portrayed as a sequence of historical occurrences that stretch for centuries across a continent.
The weakness of the book is the maps. They are not always accurate: ie. Pakistan's border with China has been replaced with Afghanistan.
 A path through the ancient and modern world December 23, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Thubron makes the Silk Road come alive with both his eye for contemporary detail and his knowledge of its history. The paradoxes of the modern world are evident throughout--the embrace of Western popular culture and the weariness with Western values, for example. Thubron goes the local route and suffers most of the same inconveniences and indignities as the locals and provides insight into the response to SARS and the reaction to recent conflicts in the region. I knocked off a star for a collection of minor reasons: The maps are of limited use; there is an elliptical quality to several parts of the book and it appears that content was deleted (e.g., Tubron has letters for two friends who are never heard of again after mention of the letters); the purpose of the trip seems to get lost and the ending is a bit abrupt; and a bibliography would have been helpful. Even so, this is a book that beautifully captures details about people, places, and time.
A trip that is much better as a vicarious experience. November 30, 2007
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
Colin Thubron retraces the Silk Road so you don't have to. Travel is dangerous, food is scarce, floors of trains and buses are still slicked with spittle because public spitting is still common, at least in the Chinese hinterlands. He speaks Mandarin and Russian, and the book is especially strong where it recounts discussions with the Uighars and other Muslims. It is sobering to learn that people in these regions often believe that 9/11 was staged by the Americans and Israelis.
 Sad November 22, 2007
8 out of 15 found this review helpful
A typical Thubron book. As usual, elegant, well-composed prose. But also, as usual, a sad book. One can have Thubron travel to wherever, he will always come up with depressing accounts of circumstances, fortunes or people. Desperation, no hope, is his common theme. In fact, I got so used to this imbalance toward sadness that I did not read this book before I travelled the silk roads myself this summer - it would have spoiled me eager anticipitation. And now that I'm reading this after my return, I am glad I didnt. But nevertheless, the book is beautifully written indeed.
Ancient History Relayed Beautifully October 28, 2007
The sheer melodic beauty of Colin Thubron's writing enhanced this history of one man's seven thousand mile journey from China to Turkey along the exotic pathway of the ancient Silk Road. Although I'll never remember the copious facts related, I was impressed with the wealth of historical information about this hugely important trade route that had such a profound effect on all the civilizations that benefited from it.
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