The Lost Heart of Asia

by Colin Thubron (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  1995

  $3.40

  This is a travel book on the newly emergent countries of central Asia, which contain the magical cities of Bukhara and Samarkand, the Kazakh Steppes, the deserts of Karakum and the Pamir Mountains. This is an enormous land, as big as Western Europe, secret, turned in on itself, heart of the Great Mongol Empire of Tamerlane, Route of Silk roads and scene of Stalin's cruellest deportations. Colin Thubron travelled by train, bus, car and foot throughout the former Moslem Republics, and this is the story of his encounters with their people, landscape and past. Central Asia, which since 1917 has been almost unknown, has become doubly important with the collapse of the Soviet Union. This book is a search into the region's fragmented identity and the crisis of the many once-dominant Russians who remain. Will central Asia fall prey to the Moslem fundamentalism of its neighbour, Iran, or revert to communism, or push into capitalism?

• Used

  Paperback
  1994

  $22.94

• Used

  Hardcover
  1994

  $3.25

  Thubron's first travel book since Behind the Wall (winner of the Hawthornden Prize and the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award) describes the newly emergent countries of Central Asia, originally part of the Soviet Union. They contain the magical cities of Bukhara, Samarkand and Tashkent, the Kazakh steppes, the deserts of Karakum and the Pamir mountains. North of Iran and west of China, east of the Caspian Sea, this is an enormous land, as big as Western Europe, heart of the great Mongol Empire of Tamerlane, route of the silk roads and scene of Stalin's most devilish deportations.

• New

  Paperback
  2004

  $13.87

  Thubron travelled throughout Central Asia in the wake of the break-up of the Soviet Union and documented the widespread social upheaval in a region reeling from political change. Thubron is an inspirational writer, intrepid traveller and insightful observer and his The Lost Heart of Asia is an outstanding guide to the history, people and culture of a vast region resonating with history and politics.