Thomas Wide
Taking A Stand
Out of Steppe: The Lost Peoples of Central Asia
By Daniel Metcalfe
Hutchinson 241pp £18.99 order from our bookshop
Daniel Metcalfe’s first book, Out of Steppe, which charts a five-month trip to track down ‘the lost peoples of Asia’, bravely takes up the challenge of contemporary travel writing. Metcalfe’s reasons for writing the book are a little flimsy: he is inspired by ‘a feeling … that if I didn’t talk to some of these people soon, in a few years their culture may be indistinguishable from their neighbours’. Nevertheless, his instinct is quite right. These beleaguered ethnic groups, struggling to survive in a post-Soviet world, deserve our attention.
After a year living in Tehran, Metcalfe sets off for Uzbekistan, armed with a classical education, colloquial Dari and boundless enthusiasm. His first stop is Karakalpakstan in western Uzbekistan, where wrong-headed Soviet agricultural policies have led to the disastrous depletion of the Aral Sea and to the loss
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
'There is a difference between a doctor who writes medical treatises and a doctor who writes absurdist fiction. Do we want our heart surgeon to be an anti-realist?'
Joanna Kavenna peruses Iain Bamforth's 'Scattered Limbs: A Medical Dreambook'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/trust-me-philosopher
How did Uwe Johnson, the German writer who was friends with Hannah Arendt and Max Frisch, end up living out his days in the town of Sheerness, Kent?
https://literaryreview.co.uk/estuary-german
You only have a week left to take advantage of our February offer: a six-month subscription for only £19.99.
https://www.mymagazinesub.co.uk/literary-review/promo/literaryfebruary/