Shadow of the Silk Road

Name: Shadow of the Silk Road
Rating: 4.2 (650 reviews)

by Colin Thubron

First published 2006

Amazon

4.2(650)

Colin Thubron follows the old Silk Road westward for more than seven thousand miles, travelling from China through Central Asia and northern Afghanistan to Iran and Kurdish Turkey. Over eight months he uses trains, buses, cars and long stretches on foot to trace routes once used by merchants, pilgrims, armies and missionaries, meeting people whose lives now occupy the same corridors of movement.

The historical road is never presented as a vanished golden age. China is still negotiating the legacy of the Cultural Revolution, the former Soviet republics of Central Asia are constructing new states and identities, and Afghanistan and Iran carry the effects of recent war and revolution. Against these modern borders Thubron sets the older exchanges of Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, trade and Mongol power, showing the Silk Road as a changing network rather than a single line across Asia.