Shadow of the Silk Road cover art

Shadow of the Silk Road

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Shadow of the Silk Road

By: Colin Thubron
Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble
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About this listen

 Out of the heart of China into the mountains of Central Asia, across Northern Afghanistan and the plains of Iran into Kurdish Turkey, Colin Thubron undertakes a journey along the greatest land route on earth: the Silk Road. Travelling 7,000 miles in eight months, he traces the passage not only of trade and armies, but of ideas, religions and inventions. With a gift for talking to others, and of getting them to talk to him, Thubron meets some fascinating people and encounters some of the world's discontented margins, where the true boundaries are not political borders but the frontiers of tribe, ethnicity, language and religion.©2006 Colin Thubron (P)2007 Isis Publishing Ltd. Asia Middle East Travel Writing & Commentary Iran China Middle Ages Africa Ancient History

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Critic reviews

"He stands awestruck before the oldest piece of paper in the world in a Chinese museum and is quarantined for Sars in the Taklamakan desert as he bears witness to a world that is remote from our own yet unbreakably connected to it."( The Times)
"Thubron doesn't cut corners, he talks to people, he takes risks, he's honest-and so is Jonathan Keeble's reading. He's got a great on-the-road voice."( The Guardian)
All stars
Most relevant
An engaging, awe-inspiring read. Simply beautiful prose interwoven with historical background and lively dialogue Realistically, whilst I may never get to travel to any of the places recorded in this book, I now feel as if I have a far more vivid and informed picture of exactly what I am missing. If I could choose anyone as a dinner guest, Mr Thubron, you’d be top of my list!

Awe-inspiring

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Well observed with plenty of personal encounters and conversations recounted to make this most enjoyable. However, as another reviewer remarked, the carelessness of the narrator with the pronunciation of Chinese names is very annoying. It is not, alas, the only audiobook to fall foul of this error, but how refreshing it would be if the producers of audiobooks spent just a little more money to employ an advisor in to help narrators in this regard.

Thoroughly Enjoyable

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The author is clearly a very accomplished writer. Here, he has sacrificed narrative flow for literary style with the result that I often didn't know where he was or where he was going. It is a journey after all.

Should have been a great book...

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best book I've listened to full of drama and will probably listen or read it again in a few years

magnificent .wonderful

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This travelogue is done in the normal Thubron style of successive vignettes of people encountered along the way. It just got a bit samey. I gave it until Uzbekistan but then had to catch a faster book back to something more engrossing. The Audible narration is also tedious as the delivery varies very little between whispered awe and murmured wonder. Sorry Mr Thubron, it was a steppe too far.

Got a bit tedious

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