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The Lost Heart of Asia is Colin Thubron's long-awaited travel book on the countries of Central Asia that emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Union. This remote and fascinating region contains the magical cities of Bukhara and Samarkand, and terrain as diverse as the Kazakh steppes, the Karakum desert and the Pamir mountains. As in his classic work on China, Behind the Wall, Colin Thubron portrays - with rare beauty and distinction - a world on the brink of change.
Central Asia is an enormous land, bigger than Western Europe, secret, turned in on itself, heart of the great Mongol empire of Tamerlane, site of the legendary Silk Road and scene of Stalin's cruelest deportations. Colin Thubron traveled by train, bus, car and foot throughout its five republics, and this is the story of his encounters with their people, landscape and past.
Central Asia has become crucially important with the arrival of its independence. So, behind the excitement of the journey, The Lost Heart of Asia is a search into the region's fragmented identity. Will it fall prey to the Moslem fundamentalism of its neighbor, Iran, or revert to communism, or move toward capitalism? Colin Thubron met every kind of inhabitant from Islamic students to workers, academics, artists and farmers, slept in their homes and listened to their thoughts. His book paints a rich, sympathetic and complex picture of a changing land. It is, above all, a seductive travel book - full of the sights, sounds and smells of this extraordinary heartland.
