Shadow of the Silk Road

On buses, donkey carts, trains, jeeps and camels, Colin Thubron traces the drifts of the first great trade route out of the heart of China into the mountains of Central Asia, across northern Afghanistan and the plains of Iran into Kurdish Turkey. Covering over 7000 miles in eight months Thubron recounts exraordinary adventures - a near-miss qith a drunk-driver, incarceration in c Chinese cell during the SARS epidemic, undergoing root canal treatment without anaesthetic in Iran - in inimitable prose. Shadow oof tih Silk Road is about Asia today; a magnifıcent account of an ancient world in modern ferment.

'Shadow of the Silk Road is an ostonishing achievement - both the journey and the book.. Tenacity, endurance, stamina and erudition metamorphose into exquisite prose' The Economist

'Shadow of the Silk Road is a work of boundless riches. Every paragraph carries a captivating phrase... offering up an understanding of our world today that is as immediate as tomorrow's news, yet infinitely profoun'd mail on Sunday

'One of Thubron's great strengths is his compassion... his shimmering prose creates a wonderfull book, so multilayered that, when I reachde the end, I wanted to read it all over again' Sunday Times

'A poetic volume - interesting, shocking and deeply engaging, the work of a mature writer at teh top of his game' Daily Telegraph

'Rich in humour, compassion and history, another confirmation, if any more were neeeded, that Thubron is the pre-eminent travel writer of his generation' Sunday Telegraph