London : Chatto & Windus, 2006. First Edition. Hardcover. Not price-clipped. Fine cloth copy in a very good, slightly edge-nicked and dust-dulled dust-wrapper, now mylar-sleeved. Remains particularly well-preserved overall; tight, bright, clean and strong. Physical description: 363 pages : maps ; 24 cm. Subjects: Thubron, Colin Travel Silk Road. Silk Road Description and travel. Genre: Travel. Language: English.

Synopsis

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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Details

Bookseller: MW Books Ltd. (IE)
Bookseller's Inventory #: 374584
Title: Shadow of the Silk Road
Author: Thubron, Colin
Format/Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Used
Quantity Available: 1
Edition: First Edition
ISBN 10: 0701173637
ISBN 13: 9780701173630
Publisher: London : Chatto & Windus
Place of Publication: London
Date Published: 2006

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About MW Books Ltd.

MW Books is an academic and antiquarian bookshop with a large stock in core areas such as Early Travel & Exploration, Nineteenth Century Literature, Early Political Economy, Labour and Social History, and Asian and Colonial History. Please don't hesitate to contact us with your questions or comments regarding any item listed.

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Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:

Tight: Used to mean that the binding of a book has not been overly loosened by frequent use.
Fine: A book in fine condition exhibits no flaws. A fine condition book closely approaches As New condition, but may lack the...
Cloth: "Cloth-bound" generally refers to a hardcover book with cloth covering the outside of the book covers. The cloth is stretched...
First Edition: In book collecting, the first edition is the earliest published form of a book. A book may have more than one first edition in...