The Road to Oxiana
by Robert Byron
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Book Summary Information
Author: Robert ByronIntroduction: Paul Fussell
Foreword: Rory Stewart
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-05-18
ISBN: 0195325605
Number of pages: 320
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Book Reviews of The Road to Oxiana
Book Review: Elegiac travel adventures
Summary: 5 Stars
To dispose with one of the criticisms leveled at this book below: it was in fact written by a highly cultured man who went to Eton and Oxford during a time when those institutions were at their peaks. If you don't know what "elegiac" means, or have the energy to look it up in a dictionary, you won't like this book. If you're looking for funny stories about how the Yak ate somebody's hat, you will be disappointed. Go read something by a Lonely Planet cretin and be happy. This is a serious work of literature, which is why a man like Paul Fussel wrote the introduction.
For those interested in reading high travel literature, or about the history of Jerusalem, Baghdad, Syria, Afghanistan and Persia, this book is wonderful. Because Byron was a highly cultured man, he doesn't merely relate a catalogue of sights he's seen, people he has met, and things he's done. His memoir is as much a survey of the history and anthropology of the places he visited as it is "travel book." Many of the monuments he visited are victims of savagery, and the lead Afghanistan had over Persia in those days in terms of modernization has been lost, perhaps forever.
Summary of The Road to Oxiana
In 1933, the delightfully eccentric travel writer Robert Byron set out on a journey through the Middle East via Beirut, Jerusalem, Baghdad and Teheran to Oxiana, near the border between Afghanistan and the Soviet Union. Throughout, he kept a thoroughly captivating record of his encounters, discoveries, and frequent misadventures. His story would become a best-selling travel book throughout the English-speaking world, until the acclaim died down and it was gradually forgotten. When Paul Fussell published his own book Abroad, in 1982, he wrote that The Road to Oxiana is to the travel book what "Ulysses is to the novel between the wars, and what The Waste Land is to poetry." His statements revived the public's interest in the book, and for the first time, it was widely available in American bookstores. Now this long-overdue reprint will introduce it to a whole new generation of readers. This edition features a new introduction by Rory Stewart, best known for his book The Places In Between, about his extensive travels in Afghanistan.Today, in addition to its entertainment value, The Road to Oxiana also serves as a rare account of the architectural treasures of a region now inaccessible to most Western travelers, and a nostalgic look back at a more innocent time.
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