The Middle East or Shadow of the Silk Road

The Middle East: The Nations, Their Histories, and Their Conflicts

Author: Jacob M Fellur

The region known as the Middle East has been a fixture in the Western imagination for more than a century. But how much do you know about the real Middle East—its many nations and cultures, the faiths and customs of its diverse peoples, the opulent past and turbulent present of a land whose often volatile events have changed the course of world history?

This authoritative and objective reference guide to the Middle East illuminates:

• The countries and geography of the region
• The first civilizations and the rise of empires
• Early Islam and the lasting effects of European colonization
• The historical roots of the Israeli and Palestinian conflict
• America’s relations with Iran and Iraq

Packed with straightforward information, fascinating insights, and colorful historical detail, The Middle East is a must-read for anyone interested in not just keeping up with the headlines, but understanding the stories behind them.

Book about: Pippi Longstocking or Moonlight on the Magic Flute

Shadow of the Silk Road

Author: Colin Thubron

To travel the Silk Road, the greatest land route on earth, is to trace the passage not only of trade and armies but also of ideas, religions, and inventions. Making his way by local bus, truck, car, donkey cart, and camel, Colin Thubron covered some seven thousand miles in eight months—out of the heart of China into the mountains of Central Asia, across northern Afghanistan and the plains of Iran into Kurdish Turkey—and explored an ancient world in modern ferment.

The New York Times Book Review - Lorraine Adams

With its elegiac tone, "Shadow of the Silk Road" is moving in a way that's rare in travel literature, sidestepping nostalgia even as it notes its pull. Thubron goes to places most other sojourners can't—because they're not so much geographic locations as states of mind, formed from the lifelong accretion of intriguing facts, mistaken hopes, mysteries. Here, on civilization's oldest and longest road, which isn't quite a road, he has found his way into that kingdom and brought it into focus for us.

The Washington Post - Jonathan Yardley

"...[Thubron] is a scholar as well as a traveler and writer, with the result that Shadow of the Silk Road is as much a history lesson as a contemporary adventure. All in all, a splendid book."

Publishers Weekly

In his latest absorbing travel epic, Thubron (In Siberia; Mirror to Damascus) follows the course—or at least the general drift—of the ancient network of trade routes that connected central China with the Mediterranean Coast, traversing along the way several former Soviet republics, war-torn Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey. The author travels third-class all the way, in crowded, stifling railroad cars and rattle-trap buses and cars, staying at crummy inns or farmers' houses, subject to shakedowns by border guards and constant harassment—even quarantine—by health officials hunting the SARS virus. Physically, these often monotonously arid, hilly regions of Central Asia tend to go by in a swirl of dun-colored landscapes studded with Buddha shrines in varying states of repair or ruin, but Thubron's poetic eye still teases out gorgeous subtleties in the panorama. Certain themes also color his offbeat encounters with locals—most of them want to get the hell out of Central Asia—but again he susses out the infinite variety of ordinary misery. The conduit by which an entire continent exchanged its commodities, cultures and peoples—Thubron finds traces of Roman legionaries and mummies of Celtic tribesmen in western China—the Silk Road becomes for him an evocative metaphor for the mingling of experiences and influences that is the essence of travel. (July 3)

) takes an arduous 7,000-mile journey following the ancient silk trade route from inland China to Turkey's Mediterranean coast. At the very least, his marathon expedition through desert, mountains and war-scarred landscapes testifies to the author's fortitude and resourcefulness. He's quarantined by Chinese authorities during the SARS epidemic, nearly killed by a drunk driver in a head-on collision and forced to endure treatment of an abscessed tooth by a team of Iranian village dentists who don't use anesthetic. Thubron attends a rock concert staged in a Tehran military hospital, dodges suspicious guards at several remote border crossings and searches out the tombs of Genghis Khan, Omar Khayyam and Ayatollah Khomeini. He augments his trenchant narrative with impressive historical background and evocative lyrical prose: "In late autumn the road traversed a near-desert plain. From time to time a faint, brown wash overhung the horizon, as if a watercolorist had started painting mountains there, then forgotten them." Even the most erudite readers, however, may find themselves daunted and disoriented by this lengthy sojourn in such consonant-laden regions as Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, complete with their obscure attendant cultural histories. Until 1498, when the Portuguese sailed around Africa and found a safer route to China's riches, the Silk Road across central Asia was traveled by successions of invaders. East-bound from Rome, Greece and Arabia came poetry, metals and conquering armies. From China, traders carried westward such wonders as silk, paper, gunpowder and the mechanical clock. Thubron carefully picks through the cultural andarcheological remains of a half-dozen societies with a discerning eye and a scholar's discipline, pausing to note the fallout from such relatively recent arrivals as China's murderous Red Guards, the Taliban and ruthless Afghan warlords. He also pauses long enough to meet and introduce a host of memorable characters, including a Chinese college dean and some Afghan truck drivers. An impressive, rewarding and occasionally exhausting trek, most suitable for the hardcore travel reader.

Table of Contents:

Author's note     xiii
Dawn     1
The Capital     7
Mantra     46
The Last Gate Under Heaven     68
The Southern Road     96
Kashgar     138
The Mountain Passage     154
To Samarkand     184
Over the Oxus     219
Mourning     262
The Mongol Peace     294
To Antioch     333
Timeline     346
Index     350