Book description
This is the account of Thubron's 15,000-mile journey through an
astonishing country - one twelfth of the land surface of the whole
earth. He journeyed by train, river and truck among the people most
damaged by the breakup of the Soviet Union, traveling among Buddhists
and animists, radical Christian sects, reactionary Communists and the
remnants of a so-call Jewish state; from the site of the last Czar's
murder and Rasputin's village, to the ice-bound graves of ancient
Sythians, to Baikal, deepest and oldest of the world's lakes.
It is the story of a people moving through the ruins of Communism
into more private, diverse and often stranger worlds.
Colin Thubron is an acknowledged master of travel writing, and the
winner of many prizes and awards. His first writing was about the Middle
East - Damascus, Lebanon and Cyprus. In 1982 he travelled into the
Soviet Union in an ancient Morris Marina, pursued by the KGB, a journey
he recorded in
Among the Russians
. From these early experiences developed his classic travel books:
Behind the Wall
(winner of the Hawthornden Prize and the Thomas Cook Travel Award),
The Lost Heart of Asia
,
In Siberia
(Prix Bouvier) and
Shadow of the Silk Road
(all available in Vintage). In 2010 Colin Thubron became President the
Royal Society of Literature.
