The Lost Heart of Asia - by Colin Thubron (Paperback)

From the Back Cover

A land of enormous proportions, countless secrets, and incredible history, Central Asia was the heart of the great Mongol empire of Tamerlane and scene of Stalin's cruelest deportations. A remote and fascinating region in a constant state of transition--never more so than since the collapse of the Soviet Union--it encompasses terrain as diverse as the Kazakh steppes, the Karakum desert, and the Pamir mountains. In The Lost Heart of Asia, acclaimed, bestselling travel writer Colin Thubron carries readers on an extraordinary journey through this little understood, rarely visited, yet increasingly important corner of the world.

Review Quotes

"Thubron has a novelist's sensitivity and an historian's perception. One could not ask for a more rewarding travel companion through a little-known land." - Washington Post Book World

"One of the most masterful and compelling travel books I have read in along time. Thubron ... is at once astonishingly learned and astonishingly soulful, keenly attuned to the glories and the contradictions, the dreams and the despairs of past and present." - San Francisco Examiner