Central Asia and the Silk Routes
A selection of books on Central Asia including Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgystan and Afghanistan
Empires of the Indus
Alice Albinia
From the preface: "This book recounts a journey along the Indus, upstream and back in time, from the sea to the source, from the moment that Pakistan first came into being in Karachi, to the time, millions of years ago in Tibet, when the river was born."
This short description gives some indication of the depth of history covered within its covers. One of the best travel books of recent years.
John Murray 2009
ISBN 0719560055
Hbk £9.99
The Kite Runner
Khaled Hosseini
Twelve-year-old Amir is desperate to gain the approval of his father and resolves to win the local kite-flying tournament. His friend Hassan promises to help him, but this is 1970's Afghanistan and Hassan is merely a low-caste servant who is jeered at in the street, although Amir
feels jealous of his natural courage. But neither of the boys could foresee what would happen to Hassan on the afternoon of the tournament which was to shatter their lives...
Bloomsbury 2003
ISBN 0747566534
Pbk £7.99
Drinking Arak off an Ayatollah's Beard
Nicholas Jubber
This is a captivating journey through modern Iran and Afghanistan that sheds light on present-day conflicts by tapping the most surprising of sources - a thousand-year-old epic poem. Iran and Afghanistan - two modern countries so overtaken by Islamic fundamentalism that many citizens spend their entire lives hiding what they do, enjoy, and value. To better understand the cultural issues and paradoxes facing Iranians and Afghans today, Nicholas Jubber travels from the underground dance parties of Tehran to the opium dens of Afghanistan's Helmand province. Along the way he discovers traces of a vibrant, pre-Islamic Persian culture still alive and well, and with each encounter he is increasingly drawn back to an unlikely source-Ferdosi, the father of Persian culture, whose 11th-century epic, the Shahnameh ("Book of Kings") becomes both Jubber's window into the region's past and his link to its tumultuous present.
Da Capo Press 2010
ISBN 9780306818844
Pbk £9.99
Stones into Schools
Greg Mortensen
Over the past sixteen years, Greg Mortenson, through his nonprofit Central Asia Institute (CAI), has worked to promote peace through education by establishing more than 130 schools, most of them for girls, in remote regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan. The story of how this remarkable humanitarian campaign began was told in his bestselling 2006 book, Three Cups of Tea. Mortenson's philosophies about building relationships, empowering communities, and educating girls have struck a powerful chord. Hundreds of communities and universities, as well as several branches of the U.S. miilitary, have used Three Cups of Tea as a common read.
Picking up where Three Cups of Tea left off in late 2003, Sones into Schools traces the CAI's efforts to work in a whole new country, the secluded northeast corner of Afghanistan.
Viking 2009
ISBN 9780670021154
Hbk £18.99
Full Tilt
Dervla Murphy
This first edition published in 1965 is the diary of Dervla Murphy's bicycle trek from Dunkirk, across Europe, through Iran and Afghanistan, over the Himalayas to Pakistan and India. Murphy's immediate rapport with the people she alights among is vibrant and appealing and makes her travelogue unique.
John Murray 1965
(First Edition)
Hbk £45.00
Magic Bus: On the Hippie Trail From Istanbul to India
Maclean Rory
The Asia overland route, stretching from Turkey to India, covers 6,000 miles and thousands of years of history. In the 1960s and 1970s, the route became the Hippie Trail, as thousands of young people travelled overland to India. It soon became an essential experience for people seeking Shangri-la.
Rory Maclean retraces the journey from Istanbul to Goa by bus, train and plane. He meets the hippies who still live along the route and the locals who dealt with the rapid influx of travellers, and asks why the journey defined a generation.
Penguin 2007
ISBN 9780141015958
Pbk £8.99
Shadow of the Silk Road
Colin Thubron
The Silk Road is a huge network of arteries and veins, splitting and converging across the breadth of Asia. Chinese silk has turned up in the hair of a 10th-century-BC Egyptian mummy; equally, the tartan plaids of 3000-year-old mummies in the Chinese desert echo those of early Celts. To be travelling the Silk Road, writes Colin Thubron, is to be travelling the history of the world: tracing the passage not just of trade and armies, but of ideas, religions and inventions. Yet - despite the lure of the history - this book is as much about Asia today. Its themes include different Islams (oppressed in China; fervent in Afghanistan and Iran; cautiously monitored in Uzbekistan); contrast (no cities could be more different than ancient Samarkand and modern Teheran); and the way that today's borders are meaningless because the true boundaries are made by tribe, ethnicity, language and religion.
Vintage 2006
ISBN 9780099437222
Pbk £8.99
