Here are 100 books that Unravelling the Silk Road fans have personally recommended if you like
Unravelling the Silk Road.
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I’m an OB/GYN, passionate about adventuring beyond what’s expected. This has led me to pivot multiple times in my career, now focusing on writing. I’ve written a play, The Post-Roe Monologues, to elevate women’s stories. I cherish the curiosity that drives outer and inner exploration, and I love memoirs that skillfully weave the two. The books on this list feature extraordinary women who took risks, left comfort and safety, and battled vulnerability to step into the unknown. These authors moved beyond the stories they’d believed about themselves–or that others told about them. They invite you to think about living fuller and bigger lives.
I found the author's gorgeous writing and deep reflection to be irresistible. Harris is a true explorer of the world and the self as well as a brilliant writer.
This book showcases the curiosity and awe that drove Harris and her best friend to bicycle across the Silk Road. While pedaling out of bounds on her bicycle, she effortlessly led me to new territories of thought and imagination. Her descriptions are vivid, and I identified fully with her love of wildness.
"Lands of Lost Borders carried me up into a state of openness and excitement I haven't felt for years. It's a modern classic."-Pico Iyer
A brilliant, fierce writer, and winner of the 2019 RBC Taylor Prize, makes her debut with this enthralling travelogue and memoir of her journey by bicycle along the Silk Road-an illuminating and thought-provoking fusion of The Places in Between, Lab Girl, and Wild that dares us to challenge the limits we place on ourselves and the natural world.
As a teenager, Kate Harris realized that the career she craved-to be an explorer, equal parts swashbuckler and…
I worked for many years in business consultancy before branching into other genres, including fiction. Through working regularly in Singapore I was able to travel around the region, finding I loved that part of the world. I came to regard Thailand as the jewel of Southeast Asia. I continue to visit and aim for my light-hearted travel writing to encourage others to enjoy the area and be ambitious in their travel plans. I regard my book as an invitation to share my love of a unique place and was delighted when one reviewer described my writing of it as “Brysonish.”
Again, a writer I love, more serious than the likes of Bill Bryson but no less readable.
This book records a journey from China along the historic Silk Road and across the world to the mountains of Central Asia, encompassing time in places such as Afghanistan, which was a difficult place then and one where circumstances deteriorated subsequently.
It is writing that makes you dwell on the history and want to follow every step—and every page.
Colin Thurbon's beautiful prose unfolds along the Silk Road, unearthing a richly layered past on his most ambitious journey.
On buses, donkey carts, trains, jeeps and camels, Colin Thubron traces the drifts of the first great trade route out of the heart of China into the mountains of Central Asia, across northern Afghanistan and the plains of Iran into Kurdish Turkey. A magnificent account of an ancient world in modern ferment, Thubron covers over 7000 miles in eight months enduring a near-miss with a drunk-driver, incarceration in a Chinese cell, and undergoing root canal treatment without anaesthetic, along the way.…
My sister and I were raised by our single mother in Southeast Detroit, who worked hard to put herself through law school when we were kids. We had a lot of financial struggles growing up, and I had to overcome many obstacles to get where I am today. Because of that, I am drawn to fierce female protagonists who overcome challenges and don’t shy away from struggle. In my own creative writing, I tend to feature strong female characters who have faced some type of instability and have worked hard to better their circumstances. I love an underdog and think there’s a lot of unsung narratives to tell.
This was such a fascinating read for me. It’s an epic tale told over the lifetime of a woman warrior named Akmaral that interweaves fact and folklore into a mesmerizing story about matriarchal power, the ferocity of love and hate, and the alternating currents of battle and peace.
I was so absorbed in the beautiful language of this book that I couldn’t put it down. The novel recreates the expansive, unforgiving world of 5th-century Central Asia, a setting firmly rooted in the natural and spiritual worlds and the struggle to survive.
While being dazzled by the writing, I felt like I had a crash course in ancient history as well!
Before the Silk Road had a name, nomads roamed the Asian steppes and women fought side by side as equals with men. Like all women of the Sauromatae, Akmaral is bound for battle from birth, training as a girl in horsemanship, archery, spear, and blade. Her prowess ignites the jealousy of Erzhan, a gifted warrior who hates her as much as he desires her. When Scythian renegades attack, the two must unite to defeat them. Among their captives is Timor, the rebels' enigmatic leader who refuses to be broken, even as he is enslaved. He fascinates Akmaral. But as attraction…
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
When I first visited Central Asia in 2008, little did I know that it would become the focus of my life and work. I now advise the World Bank and national governments on economic development, with a particular focus on tourism, and I’m the Chairman of the Royal Society for Asian Affairs. I am Uzbekistan’s Ambassador for Tourism, a co-founder of the Silk Road Literary Festival, and I’ve written and updated guidebooks to Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and the Silk Road.
Food is without doubt one of the most insightful windows into any culture. The food we eat is a mirror of who we are and where we come from, a strong trigger for memory, and cooking together or sharing a meal creates an unusually strong bond between people who were previously strangers. In Red Sands, Caroline Eden combines reportage, photography, and recipes to build a rich picture of Central Asia, introducing people and places foreigners would never normally encounter. Her stories are diverse, evocative, and thought-provoking, but they have one thing in common: they make you hungry for adventure and to taste the many ingredients and dishes she describes.
"Caroline Eden is an extraordinarily creative and gifted writer. Red Sands captures the sights, tastes and feel of Central Asia so well that when reading this book I was sometimes convinced I was there in person. A wonderful book from start to finish." Peter Frankopan, author of The Silk Roads\
"Caroline Eden, whose book Black Sea was showered with awards, is on the road again, this time travelling through the heart of Asia. It's not your usual cookbook, it's more a travel book with recipes, the recipes acting as postcards which…
Like many road warriors, Kevin Shay experienced his first taste of highway travels through his family, piling into a station wagon at a young age to journey several thousand miles in a week or so. He learned how to entertain himself for long hours without an iPod or cellphone. As a journalist, he wrote travel articles for a variety of publications, as well as a travel guidebook on North Texas. He has traveled through 48 states and more than 30 countries, logging more than 200,000 miles in a variety of vehicles and his own feet. He also produced a 19-minute documentary, Searching for Something in the Middle of Nowhere, based on the Mad, Mad Trip book.
This guidebook broadens travelers’ perspective beyond the United States, unearthing a whole new world in a wide variety of countries. Written by National Geographic travel writers, they cover everything from the ancient Silk Road in Central Asia to the perimeter of Puerto Rico. There are plenty of scenic photos, colorful maps, and tips to help navigate the roads of foreign lands.
This lavishly illustrated travel planner features 500 of the world's most memorable driving experiences, from legendary Highway 1 in California to Japan's famous Irohazaka Winding Road.
Compiled from the favorite trips of National Geographic's legendary travel writers, Drives of a Lifetime spans the globe to reveal the best celebrated and lesser-known road trips on the planet. Inside this fully updated and revised edition--featuring more than 20 new drives--you'll find routes through spectacular landscapes, ideas for quick getaways, leisurely journeys of discovery, and revelations of secret worlds beyond Google Maps. Some are legendary long-distance odysseys; others are easy day trips close…
When I first visited Central Asia in 2008, little did I know that it would become the focus of my life and work. I now advise the World Bank and national governments on economic development, with a particular focus on tourism, and I’m the Chairman of the Royal Society for Asian Affairs. I am Uzbekistan’s Ambassador for Tourism, a co-founder of the Silk Road Literary Festival, and I’ve written and updated guidebooks to Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and the Silk Road.
Tragically little Central Asian literature has been translated into English: Hamid Ismailov’s books are notable exceptions. The Devils’ Dance won the 2019 EBRD Literature Prize, and it was the first time an Uzbek writer was awarded a major international prize. It is the desire to see more writers like Hamid be able to bring their books to global audiences that prompted me to co-found the Silk Road Literary Festival.
On New Years' Eve 1938, the writer Abdulla Qodiriy is taken from his home by the Soviet secret police and thrown into a Tashkent prison. There, to distract himself from the physical and psychological torment of beatings and mindless interrogations, he attempts to mentally reconstruct the novel he was writing at the time of his arrest based on the tragic life of the Uzbek poet-queen Oyhon, married to three khans in succession, and living as Abdulla now does, with the threat of execution hanging over her. As he gets to know his cellmates, Abdulla discovers that the Great Game of…
Marianne Bohr and her husband, about to turn sixty, are restless for adventure. They decide on an extended, desolate trek across the French island of Corsica — the GR20, Europe’s toughest long-distance footpath — to challenge what it means to grow old. Part travelogue, part buddy story, part memoir, The…
I am a reporter and author with a passion for seeking out stories less told, and there are plenty of those in Central Asia, where I made my home more than two decades ago: first in Uzbekistan and, since 2005, in Kazakhstan. I have found telling overlooked tales from an overlooked region that is overshadowed by its mighty neighbours – the Russian bear to the north and the Chinese dragon to the east – to be both rewarding and valuable. I hope these book selections will bring more stories about the people who populate Central Asia to the attention of readers with inquisitive minds.
As I perched on the ramparts of the citadel in Khiva one sunny morning in autumn of 2001, the scene in the bazaar below of sellers hawking everything from recalcitrant sheep to giant melons and elaborately-carved furniture summoned up the exotic past of a town once traversed by caravans of merchants plying their trade between China and Europe. But what is compelling about this book is its focus not on Khiva’s illustrious history but on the present-day lives of the people the author encountered when he lived among them running a carpet-making workshop. Fascinating both for its forensic exploration of that ancient craft and for the sensitive depictions of the people of Khiva, this book is a true tale of the modern-day Silk Road.
The Silk Road conjures images of the exotic and the unknown. Most travellers simply pass along it. Brit Chris Alexander chose to live there. Ostensibly writing a guidebook, Alexander found life at the heart of the glittering madrassahs, mosques and minarets of the walled city of Khiva - a remote desert oasis in Uzbekistan - immensely alluring, and stayed.
Immersing himself in the language and rich cultural traditions Alexander discovers a world torn between Marx and Mohammed - a place where veils and vodka, pork and polygamy freely mingle - against a backdrop of forgotten carpet designs, crumbling but magnificent…
I am a historian primarily of western Europe in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. My leading interest has shifted over many years from the people who were persecuted as heretics at that time to their persecutors, as it dawned on me that whereas scepticism about the teachings of the Roman (or any) church was easily understandable, the persecution of mostly rather humble people who presented no real threat to that Church or to wider society was not, and needed to be explained.
The Silk Road is a nineteenth-century invention, but the movements of people, things, and ideas in and through the immense and often terrifying space between modern Iran and China generated change in every sphere and engaged an astonishing variety of people. Valerie Hansen’s exploration of seven places along the imagined route and what has been found in them offers a lucid and lively introduction to a wider medieval world and how we know about it.
The Silk Road is as iconic in world history as the Colossus of Rhodes or the Suez Canal. But what was it, exactly? It conjures up a hazy image of a caravan of camels laden with silk on a dusty desert track, reaching from China to Rome. The reality was different-and far more interesting-as revealed in this new history.
In The Silk Road, Valerie Hansen describes the remarkable archeological finds that revolutionize our understanding of these trade routes. For centuries, key records remained hidden-sometimes deliberately buried by bureaucrats for safe keeping. But the sands of the Taklamakan Desert have revealed…
As host of the Airport Economist TV series I have been to around 60 countries in 5 years and I have always been fascinated by what makes each place tick. I have been curious as to why some countries succeed and others fail, how do businesses operate there and how do the people fare when it comes to elections. I am interested in how egalitarian the place is, how rich are the rich, how do the poor do, is life improving. I am also interested in sport and popular culture and how important it is to the local populace.
This is the best account of whole sweep of world history – the invasions, the migrations, the trade routes, the religious wars, and the making and unmaking of empires.
There’s no better book on how mankind traversed the globe and the lessons learnt along the way.
I loved the book because it made me think about the long view of history and understand the economic and social forces beyond a cheap headline or short-sighted analysis that we see in current affairs today.
Like it or not, since the dawn of time, mankind has been migrating, discovering, and trading, despite the ‘we were here first’ sentiment we hear today.
And despite a lot of the history being tragic, with wars and famine and the like, it did give me optimism that human beings always find a way, whether it be climate change, conflict, or a financial crisis.
From the Sunday Times and internationally bestselling author of The Silk Roads: everything you need to know about the present and future of the world
'Masterly mapping out of a new world order' Evening Standard
'Frankopan is a brilliant guide to terra incognita' The Times
The New Silk Roads - Peter Frankopan's follow-up to the 'Book of the Decade', The Silk Roads - takes a fresh look at the network of relationships being formed along the length and breadth of the Silk Roads today.
The world is changing dramatically and in an age of Brexit and Trump, the themes of…
When two brothers discover a 300-year-old sausage-curing cabin on the side of a Slovenian mountain, it's love at first sight. But 300-year-old cabins come with 300 problems.
Dormice & Moonshine is the true story of an Englishman seduced by Slovenia. In the wake of a breakup, he seeks temporary refuge…
I’m a Canadian writer with a degree in Mediaeval Studies. Even as a child, I wrote stories about characters who weren’t entirely human; they were also always people lurking on the edges of things—families, cultures, places, ways of being, even people existing only on the edges of becoming themselves. Those have always been where I found my stories and as an adult I haven’t lost this fascination and the need to tell such tales. Gods, assassins, devils, demons, shapeshifters, immortal wanderers, and ordinary people caught up in their history, vast, deep worlds, and complex characters—that’s what I do.
The Gates of Heaven is book three of Seven Brothers, a four-book series, in which the presence and role of the gods become more and more apparent as the overarching story unfolds. Llesho’s story starts off as what you might expect of a young prince in exile, sold into slavery as a pearl-diver, who escapes and sets out to find his scattered brothers. It doesn’t end up where you think, and this book is the point in the series where the story of gods and goddesses and dragons involved in human affairs really takes over as the main plotline, though the threads of it have been there from start. Mountains, grasslands, ancient cities, and their trade routes—this is an excellent silk road fantasy as well.
The evil sorcerer Markko has sworn to capture the last of Prince Llesho's brothers. If Markko succeeds, Llesho will not be able to save Thebin, or reopen the Gates of Heaven. As murder and dark magic threaten Llesho's alliances, he realizes his only chance lies in finding his brothers first. So begins a desperate hunt that will lead the prince from the slave market to a sea voyage fraught with perils, and an incredible discovery about the sorcerer who seems bent on his destruction.
