Jonathan Mirsky
From Antioch To Xian
In 2003/4 – the year is not mentioned in his book – the renowned travel writer Colin Thubron made a tough, 7,000-mile, eight-month trip from central China to Turkey. (The Afghan portion, delayed for a year because of fighting, is included seamlessly here.) Travelling largely by bus, rickety taxi and train, with stays in bottom-grade hostels and hotels, he ate revolting food and was occasionally in danger. The SARS epidemic had driven most tourists away and he was constantly having his temperature taken by police doctors; at one point he was warned that in two weeks he might be dead. I have made the same trip up to the western borderlands of China by the same means, and remember with a shudder the transport and the places to stay.
The Silk Road, these days a tourist industry come-on, is a term, as Thubron says, that was devised by a nineteenth-century German geographer. But such a thing did once exist, meandering for 6,000 years over different routes from China as far as the eastern Mediterranean. Chinese silk appeared in Iron
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
On the night of 5th July 1809, a group of soldiers kidnapped Pope Pius VII on the orders of Napoleon Bonaparte. Munro Price looks at what happened next.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/bonaparte-meets-his-match
'She lived in a damp basement with her mother and sister, smoking roll-ups and talking to her parrot.'
Joanna Kavenna traces the life of the 'almost-forgotten poet' Charlotte Mew.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/she-hated-poetry-readings
'If, as James Wolcott once claimed, Roth was a miracle of modern medicine, he was also one of therapy’s notable failures.'
@leorobsonwriter on Philip Roth, that 'walking, wanking paradox'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-great-american-novelist