Shadow of the Silk Road (P.S.) Reviews

• Ancient Glories, Modern Woes

  
  By A1XXJ6I7K2I7SI on 2006-12-14
  The Silk Road was the 2,000-year-old route used for trade between vastly different cultures of ancient China and ancient Rome and all points in between. It was never one simple road, more a knot of roads, with the traders taking side routes based on the markets or on the weather. Of course, it does not exist now, but in _Shadow of the Silk Road_ (Chatto and Windus), British author Colin Thubron relates his trace of the route. Thubron has written many books before of his wanderings in Russia, Siberia, and China, and this one is beautifully written, with descriptions of sites that few other tourists are going ever to see and encounters with people like Hunan traders, Uzbek prostitutes, or Buddhist monks. The significance of the Silk Road is merely historical, but many of the regions through which Thubron travels, despite their generally blighted aspects, are important within today's headlines. Thubron started his 7,000-mile travels in 2003, the year that America and Britain invaded Iraq, and indeed he had to take a break because of fighting in Afghanistan. He had to resume his journey the next year. It is impossible to say how representative his "man-on-the-street" conversations are, taking individuals from once-great societies who have been subject to wrenching change especially in the last few decades, but he is generally treated genially, often generously, even by those who object to his nation's endeavors in Iraq.
  
  The Silk Road gets its name from the most frequent and exotic of goods traded on it east-to-west, though the term comes from historians looking at the trade from the vantage of the nineteenth century. The history of the route is enticing and glamorous, perhaps more so for our viewing it from such a distant time. The route now goes among peoples who have changed completely, many of them losing heritage and status. An outbreak of SARS, which complicated Thubron's journey and even wound him up in a mockery of quarantine, makes a threatening shadow over the initial parts of the book set in China. The feeling of abandonment runs throughout the lands here. In Afghanistan, he hears among the complaints from the Hazara people, "Now we have no school, no road, no clinic... The government does nothing. We fought in the jihad against the Russians, but..." or "The Taliban killed my cows!" Thubron remarks, "They were not pleading, but angry: angry at their exclusion, as if the Taliban's branding of them as separate and inferior were being reiterated in calmer times. 'Write about us,' they said." There are conversations with a hermit-like shepherdess, an escapee from Iranian military service, an over-affectionate drunk, and more.
  
  Marco Polo brought back tales from these regions for his time, and Thubron has done so for ours. He is patient in trying to understand individuals or cultures. He is irreverent when the culture has gone amiss, but properly reverent as he visits archeological sites, mosques, or the tomb of Omar Khayyám in Nishapur (where he shows just how much Edward Fitzgerald put into his translation of _The Rubáiyát_, the "Moving Finger Writes" passage). He has plenty of erudition and knowledge of history, but also an appealing humility and self-doubt when confronting those of a foreign culture. He is as good at describing minor horrors, like the replacement of gold and silk bazaars in Samarkand by booths that sell DVDs, as he is at optimistic displays like the rock concert of young people in Teheran who are bored by the ayatollahs. It is amazing that in his sixties he made such a trip, but he obviously loves the endeavor. Near the beginning of the book, he tells why, and it is an example of his poetic and clear writing: "A hundred reasons clamour for your going... You go because you are still young and crave excitement, the crunch of your boots in the dust; you go because you are old and need to understand something before it is too late. You go to see what will happen."
  
  
  

• Nostalgic and awesomely accurate

  
  By AZ9RLJOXGGZQ on 2007-07-13
  I traveled the same roads, and shared many of the same experiences, but I was there in search of specific historical events. The sights, sounds, smells were pushed aside and not allowed to register and interfere with my 'priorities'. I missed so much and this is why I wanted to read this book and see the journey through the eyes of another traveler.
  
  I could not speak much about personal memories. I wanted to but I have never known how I would describe a Tibetan waif in Katmandu or shepherds along the KKH (Karokarum Highway). And if I could, I could not have done so as eloquently as Colin Thubron. I had to read this book to see through his eyes what I may have missed, and he made me realize that I missed a lot. Or is it simply that he is such a masterful writer?
  
  Seeing it all again through his eyes has been a deeply beautiful experience for me, full of nostalgia. I found myself gazing wistfully off the pages and back to yesterday's horizons with an undescribable longing.
  He captured it all beautifully and probably just in time because it is changing at lightning speed.
  
  Kudos, my fellow traveler, kudos for the joy and understanding your picture words bring to us all.
  
  Suzanne Olsson
  New York
  
  

• Elegant prose recounts modern journey along ancient silk road

  
  By A3QIEISBZP4QTV on 2007-08-10
  Colin Thubron's beautiful prose details his journey through modern Asia along the ancient Silk Road from China to the Mediterranean. He passes through China, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey and describes the history, cultures and people along the way.
  
  Thubron is, in my opinion, the most elegant living travel writer in the English language. His previous books include several (The Lost Heart of Asia), that overlap this same area recounting travels in this area over the last 30 years.
  
  The Silk Road is the trading corridor that went from China to the Mediterranean. Silk was one of the main products traded and gave its name to this road system. Other accounts include Marco Polo (highly recommended before reading this book), the Muslim traveller Ibn BattutaThe Adventures of Ibn Battuta: A Muslim Traveler of the Fourteenth Century, Robert Byron's travels The Road to Oxiana and several others whose accounts I found less penetrating.
  
  Importantly, Thubron travels alone - a necessity for good travel writing because those who travel in groups inevitably turn to commentary on their pathetic companions rather than the country through which they are travelling. These accounts like "A Walk in the Woods" A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail (Official Guides to the Appalachian Trail) can be entertaining but they usually aren't very insightful. So if you're looking for humor, this book is not what you are looking for.
  
  Thubron speaks some Chinese and Russian and must have an encyclopedic knowledge of the ancient and modern history of Central Asia. One of the great strengths of the book is that the author has studied and travelled in this region for decades.
  
  He starts with Western China. The Chinese people that Thubron meets with would rather forget the recent past dominated by the world's greatest mass murderer, Mao. However, Mao's legacy lives on in the strict military control of the country. China is the poster-child for environmental pillage by third world countries seeking industrialization. You can't help but be depressed. The ruined civilizations buried by desert in Western China should give sufficient pause to the Communist Chinese but there is no sign of moderation. Thubron brushes by the southern reaches of Tibet enough to note that Tibet is in its dying stages as Communist suppression and Chinese immigration wipe out the cultural remnants.
  
  Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan are more fascinating to me because the government is less oppressive and the area is less well-known to me. The history of these counties goes back thousands of years rather than hundreds. The ruined cities still have life near them in modern slap-dash cities that have sprung up since the ancient cities were destroyed by various conquerors - mostly Mongols.
  
  Afghanistan seems to be one of the most hopeful areas of the journey even though Thubron is there soon after the Taliban is defeated. Iran reminds me of China in that the populace is not really interested in politics and would rather not be subject to ego-maniacal dictators. The last few countries like Iran, Syria and Turkey are not covered in the same depth probably because the author isn't as fluent in Turkish, Arabic and Farsi.
  
  One underlying theme is the distrust of the West seen throughout his journey. Western culture has triumphed completely, but unfortunately all the culture is the worst culture. Pop culture, pornography, sexual license, drugs and materialism are rampant but the more important political foundations of the West - liberty, individualism, Christianity, and constitutional government - are nowhere to be found. If you have ever spent time in a 3rd world country listening to the myths and nonsense that is fervently believed by the native population, you won't be surprised to find that Thubron finds the same. Depressingly, there seems to be very little chance of East understanding West in the near future if the comments of the people Thubron visits are representative.
  
  The only 2 quibbles I have with the book is that the maps could have been clearer and a bibliography would have been helpful.
  
  So 4 stars for the best travel book I've read this year.
  
  

• Slogging along in the Shadows of the Silk Road

  
  By A273PSNMERK040 on 2008-03-08
  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.
  
  

• Sad

  
  By AWHM9U4T9SVYK on 2007-11-22
  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.
  
  
• Good, but not great
  By A1PKK967VA5O50 on 2008-01-26
  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.
  
  
• A trip that is much better as a vicarious experience.
  By A1UAWNCQ973DKO on 2007-11-30
  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.
  
  
• The Blood Stained Road
  By AFBK4SVLPPDRF on 2007-12-31
  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.
  
  
• Shadow of the Silk Road
  By A251QD6V3ZKJ9I on 2007-08-17
  I was transported to another place, I felt like I was peeking in on the cultures of the steppes from a birds eye view. If people interest you, then this book is a must.
  
  
• One of the Best Travel Books
  By A23STVCPLM5Z8U on 2007-08-25
  This is one of the best travel books I read so far. I noticed some reviewer comparing him with Bill Bryson. I enjoyed Bryson's book too. Thubron is less humurous, but with more depth. I am very impressed with his knowledge of the central Asia. Being from China myself, I was shocked to read his account of lost Roman legion and the early Christian relics in the heart of China. This book keeps you wonder about the world away. I was also touched by the warmth of the people he encountered during his travel. Those people have suffered enough through history, yet they welcomed a foreign traveller like their family members. What a generous and handsome group of people---be it Afghans, Uzbeks, Tajks, or others. The book is beautifully written.
  It is by chance I picked up this book and I'm glad I did. I am going to check out some other books he wrote.
  
  
• Wonderful, magical travel story
  By AZGYN8BCCKBUI on 2007-09-02
  I didn't want to put this down. Places that I've wanted to see if I had the opportunity and courage come alive in the book. Thubron describes legends and historical events over millennia, but they all fit together along with the people he meets and the landscapes he travels through. He describes with sensitivity and humanity what has been lost with time but also what is there now, often the generosity of the people he meets and their way of life. Wonderful!
  
  
• A rare beauty
  By A21PW6ST2GZNWK on 2008-01-10
  I heard an interview of the author on NPR and his clarity, passion, and humanity led me straight to the library.
  
  I have not been the least disappointed in this beautiful book, which is not so much a travel book to me, but a book about thousands of years of fragile human perceptions both tragic and beautiul. It forced my own introspection as much as it tells a story of a world I have never experienced. This is a book I will buy prior to reading it again.
  
  
• This guy has his feet on the ground
  By A182795HDCTUVP on 2007-08-24
  Once again, Colin Thubron gets down to the local, the personal, the down and dirty level to tell about the countries he goes through. This guy lives his travels. Fascinating. Unvarnished. Up close. Real. No gloss, no glitter. From China all the way to the Mediterranean. Wow.
  
  
• shadow of the silk road
  By A1QTKYHN75ACOK on 2007-08-26
  I haven't actually read it yet, but plan to. Someone else is reading it and says it is very good and an interesting account of travel through what is mostly a mysterious area to many.
  
  
• Purple Prose and Victorian Nostalgia
  By AZ8RRG7XUOJZB on 2008-10-29
  Thubron's prose seems tired compared to some of his earlier writing, almost as if he's forcing himself to write well. On occasion, it results in prose on the darker end of purple, very stilted to a modern ear (or at least to my ear). My larger criticism has to do with the lenses through which he sees the world: the glories of a romanticized past are juxtaposed against a sad, dysfunctional present. The pattern is old hack, and would be harmlessly irritating if Thubron wasn't following the same formula used by 19th century European writers to justify colonialism in places such as Egypt, viz. the natives are too socially and politically inept to govern themselves, and it is up to the Europeans to rescue the past from them, a past that is part of world heritage rather than that of the people who occupy the land about which one is writing. Against a glorious Silk Road of silks and ceramics in a completely fictitious past (as he notes, there was not one Silk Road but a multitude) we have a difficult present in specific rather than imaginary places, which is not recognized as fleeting in historical terms (as all presents tend to be). The author is only happy when he is with misfits, miscreants and the indigent, whose company he can enjoy because they make for his brand of colorful writing and (more importantly) because he is free to leave whenever he wants. If you actually want to get some sense of life in the places in question, look elsewhere. And if you're planning a trip along the Silk Road, do yourself a favor and don't read this book before you go. On the other hand, if you want to be reaffirmed in your belief that the 'natives' only make a mess of things, buy the book!
  
  
• The Woven Wind
  By AN4ZE5MO8Z1IU on 2007-08-29
  Will be liked by those who enjoy reading about hard-travel experiences. Colin Thubron has a keen ear for dialogue and an expressive pen. Informative on a number of issues from the art of silk making to China's on-going eastern movements.
  
  I do think the author's writing sometimes strays into overly ornate descriptions of the scenery on his lengthy journey across China to Antioch. An example: "Where the Jumgal valley met the massif of Sussmayer, a painted wall of mountain rose. The cliffs were torn with symmetrical scars, as if by some monstrous animal, and fell to the track in violent slabs of black and apricot. Sometimes its scree was pure coal." Also, the author has an odd writer's tic, in that he uses the word "mist" in some form at least fifteen times (...the villages were misted in pear blossom/...the horizon leveled to a dove-grey mist, etc.)
  
  A person of the rational Enlightenment will find depressing the darkness of mind still prevalent in much of the Arab/Persian part of the ancient Silk Road, where living in the far past seems to be the unfortunate standard.
  
  
• A path through the ancient and modern world
  By A1YSTCCWX2ZU34 on 2007-12-23
  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.
  
  
• Un libro hipnotizante
  By A2L50OWI793TYI on 2008-08-04
  El Sr. Thubron es un viajero de antiguo cuño. No usa máquinas fotográficas. Si es que toma algunos apuntes, me imagino que lo hace sobre una Moleskine. Allí,tal vez, también dibuja. Educado en Eton y Oxford, su prosa es elegante y maravillosa. Hipnotiza al lector. Calla para dejar que los propios personajes hablen. Ha gastado su vida en Asia. Su conocimento llega al grado de la erudición, aunque nunca intimida con ello.
  Lo veo en la línea de un Patrick Leigh Fermor o de R. Kapukzinski.
  Se lo recomiendo, fervientemente.
  
  
• In the Footsteps of Marco Polo
  By A11MLCDN9TR0PB on 2008-08-13
  Shadow of the Silk Road (P.S.)
  
  Shadow of the Silk Road
  
  "In the Footsteps of Marco Polo"
  
  "For hours I tramped along a mountain road forty miles south of Zhangye, toward the cliff temples of Matisi, before the headlights of a van swung bleakly into view through the falling snow. Its driver shouted that the road ahead was closed: panic over the SARS virus was bringing everything to a standstill. All the same, he said, he would get me through. We clattered unquestioned past a police post. Then, as the snow cleared and weak sun came out, we entered an Alpine beauty of dark, unflowering trees under the Quilian mountains. In the village beneath the temples nothing moved. Someone had built a line of wooden villas, for pilgrims or mountain lovers, but they were deserted. Against one slope a solitary farmer drove a yak at a plow."
  
  Colin Thubron has a gift for language and a sense of place. In "Shadow of the Silk Road,' he traces the ancient trade route 7,000 miles from China to the Mediterranean. Traveling by rail, local bus, horse, camel, goat cart and foot, he encounters the people who live in these lands, so distant geographically and spiritually from our own. Since he speaks both Mandarin Chinese and Russian, he is able to talk to these people and extract from their collective memory a history of the place. The Silk Road was more than goods and property: it was also a two-way street for ideas. For the most part, the political and geographic boundaries of these lands are artificial: "So the Tsarists, and the Bolsheviks after them, entered a land without nations, where a state was only the outreach of a ruler... Its frontiers were blurred opinions." (P. 201)
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Ancient History Relayed Beautifully
  By A2JSLPK8L8IF2O on 2007-10-28
  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.
  
  

• Travels with Herodotus (Vintage International)
• The Lost Heart of Asia (P.S.)
• Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu (Vintage)
• Ghost Train to the Eastern Star: On the Tracks of the Great Railway Bazaar
• Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire