The Road to Oxiana

Author: Robert Byron
Publisher: Good Press
ISBN:
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 298

Book Description
Begin a voyage through Persia and Afghanistan with renowned explorer Robert Byron in 'The Road to Oxiana'.This travelog recounts Byron's ten-month adventure, immersing readers in the rich tapestry of the Middle East, from Venice to Peshawar. As Byron travels through vibrant landscapes and encounters diverse cultures, he showcases his extensive knowledge of the region's architectural wonders. From the awe-inspiring Mosque of Sheikh Lutfullah to the majestic ruins of Persepolis, his vivid descriptions transport readers to these timeless sites.

The 100 Best Nonfiction Books of All Time

Author: Robert McCrum
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781903385838
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Beginning in 1611 with the King James Bible and ending in 2014 with Elizabeth Kolbert's 'The Sixth Extinction', this extraordinary voyage through the written treasures of our culture examines universally-acclaimed classics such as Pepys' 'Diaries', Charles Darwin's 'The Origin of Species', Stephen Hawking's 'A Brief History of Time' and a whole host of additional works --

Submergence

Author: J. M. Ledgard
Publisher: Coffee House Press
ISBN: 1566893194
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 226

Book Description
Award-winning foreign correspondent’s cerebral spy novel-cum-love story exposes humanity’s tenuous hold on a vast and relentless world.

Robert Byron

Author: James Knox
Publisher: John Murray Publishers
ISBN: 9780719548413
Category : Angleterre - Mœurs et coutumes - 20e siècle
Languages : en
Pages : 493

Book Description
Robert Byron, who died young in World War II, was the foremost travel writer of his age, acclaimed especially for The Road to Oxiana. He was also a pioneer of Byzantine history, fought to save Georgian London and was one of the first voices raised against fascism. Patrick Leigh Fermor readily admitted to being under his spell and to Nancy Mitford he was the funnies man alive. This biography draws on a range of personal sources and throws light on the gilded circle of which he was a part.

A Time of Gifts

Author: Patrick Leigh Fermor
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 1590175174
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 340

Book Description
This beloved account about an intrepid young Englishman on the first leg of his walk from London to Constantinople is simply one of the best works of travel literature ever written. At the age of eighteen, Patrick Leigh Fermor set off from the heart of London on an epic journey—to walk to Constantinople. A Time of Gifts is the rich account of his adventures as far as Hungary, after which Between the Woods and the Water continues the story to the Iron Gates that divide the Carpathian and Balkan mountains. Acclaimed for its sweep and intelligence, Leigh Fermor’s book explores a remarkable moment in time. Hitler has just come to power but war is still ahead, as he walks through a Europe soon to be forever changed—through the Lowlands to Mitteleuropa, to Teutonic and Slav heartlands, through the baroque remains of the Holy Roman Empire; up the Rhine, and down to the Danube. At once a memoir of coming-of-age, an account of a journey, and a dazzling exposition of the English language, A Time of Gifts is also a portrait of a continent already showing ominous signs of the holocaust to come.

The Station

Author: Robert Byron
Publisher: Good Press
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 245

Book Description
The Station by Robert Byron is Byron's in-depth record of his travels to Mount Athos, the spiritual heart of Eastern Orthodox Monasticism. Excerpt: "Letters from foreign countries arrive in the afternoon. Each envelope advertises a break in the monotony of days; each reveals on penetration only one more facet of a standard world. But latterly another kind has come, strangely addressed, stranger still within. "We learn," runs one, "that you are safely returned to your own glorious country and are already in the midst of your dearest ones, enjoying the best of health..."

The Way of the World

Author: Nicolas Bouvier
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 1590173228
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 339

Book Description
In 1953, twenty-four-year old Nicolas Bouvier and his artist friend Thierry Vernet set out to make their way overland from their native Geneva to the Khyber Pass. They had a rattletrap Fiat and a little money, but above all they were equipped with the certainty that by hook or by crook they would reach their destination, and that there would be unanticipated adventures, curious companionship, and sudden illumination along the way. The Way of the World, which Bouvier fashioned over the course of many years from his journals, is an entrancing story of adventure, an extraordinary work of art, and a voyage of self-discovery on the order of Robert M. Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. As Bouvier writes, “You think you are making a trip, but soon it is making—or unmaking—you.”

Abroad

Author: Paul Fussell
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199878536
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 354

Book Description
A book about the meaning of travel, about how important the topic has been for writers for two and a half centuries, and about how excellent the literature of travel happened to be in England and America in the 1920s and 30s.

Shadow of the Silk Road

Author: Colin Thubron
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061809624
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 404

Book Description
Shadow of the Silk Road records a journey along the greatest land route on earth. Out of the heart of China into the mountains of Central Asia, across northern Afghanistan and the plains of Iran and into Kurdish Turkey, Colin Thubron covers some seven thousand miles in eight months. Making his way by local bus, truck, car, donkey cart and camel, he travels from the tomb of the Yellow Emperor, the mythic progenitor of the Chinese people, to the ancient port of Antioch—in perhaps the most difficult and ambitious journey he has undertaken in forty years of travel. The Silk Road is a huge network of arteries splitting and converging across the breadth of Asia. To travel it is to trace the passage not only of trade and armies but also of ideas, religions and inventions. But alongside this rich and astonishing past, Shadow of the Silk Road is also about Asia today: a continent of upheaval. One of the trademarks of Colin Thubron's travel writing is the beauty of his prose; another is his gift for talking to people and getting them to talk to him. Shadow of the Silk Road encounters Islamic countries in many forms. It is about changes in China, transformed since the Cultural Revolution. It is about false nationalisms and the world's discontented margins, where the true boundaries are not political borders but the frontiers of tribe, ethnicity, language and religion. It is a magnificent and important account of an ancient world in modern ferment.

From the Holy Mountain

Author: William Dalrymple
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307948927
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 504

Book Description
In the spring of A.D. 587, John Moschos and his pupil Sophronius the Sophist embarked on a remarkable expedition across the entire Byzantine world, traveling from the shores of Bosphorus to the sand dunes of Egypt. Using Moschos’s writings as his guide and inspiration, the acclaimed travel writer William Dalrymple retraces the footsteps of these two monks, providing along the way a moving elegy to the slowly dying civilization of Eastern Christianity and to the people who are struggling to keep its flame alive. The result is Dalrymple’s unsurpassed masterpiece: a beautifully written travelogue, at once rich and scholarly, moving and courageous, overflowing with vivid characters and hugely topical insights into the history, spirituality and the fractured politics of the Middle East.