Book description
IN SEARCH OF ZARATHUSTRA is a quest to trace the influence of the
prophet the Greeks called Zoroaster and considered the greatest
religious legislator of the ancient world. Long before the first Hebrew
temple, the birth of Christ or the mission of Muhammad, Zarathustra had
taught of a single universal god, of the battle between Good and Evil,
of the Devil, Heaven and Hell, and of an eventual end to the world. Over
several decades, Paul Kriwaczek, an award-winning television producer,
has cast his eye across Europe and Central Asia, from Hadrian's Wall to
the Oxus river, from the Pyrenees to the Hindu Kush. Passing via
Nietzsche's interpretation of Zarathustra for a post-religious age, the
Cathars of 13th-century France, the Bulgars of 9th-century Balkans, and
the prophet Mani's revision of Zarathustra's message in the later
Persian empire, Paul Kriwaczek then explores the religion of Mithras -
before going back past Alexander the Great's destruction of the Persian
Empire, and the era of the great Persian kings Cyrus and Darius in the
6th century BC, to the beginning of the first pre-Christian millennium.
Paul Kriwaczek was born in Vienna in 1937. In London he trained as a
dentist, and spent a decade working in Iran and Afghanistan. From there
he travelled extensively in Asia and Africa before developing a career
in broadcasting and journalism. In 1970 he joined the BBC full-time and
wrote, produced and directed for 25 years. A former head of Central
Asian Affairs at the BBC World Service, he is fluent in eight languages,
including Farsi, Pashto, Urdu, Hindi and Nepalese.
