A journey along the greatest land route on earth, from the master of travel writing Colin Thubron

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. Covering over 7000 miles in eight months Thurbron recounts extraordinary adventures - a near-miss with a drunk-driver, incarceration in a Chinese cell during the SARS epidemic, undergoing root canal treatment without anaesthetic in Iran - in inimitable prose.Shadow of the Silk Roadis about Asia today; a magnificent account of an ancient world in modern ferment.

'It is hard to think of a better travel book written this century'Times

Colin Thubron is an acknowledged master of travel writing, and the winner of many prizes and awards. His first writing was about the Middle East - Damascus, Lebanon and Cyprus. In 1982 he travelled into the Soviet Union in an ancient Morris Marina, pursued by the KGB, a journey he recorded inAmong the Russians. From these early experiences developed his classic travel books:Behind the Wall(winner of the Hawthornden Prize and the Thomas Cook Travel Award),The Lost Heart of Asia,In Siberia(Prix Bouvier),Shadow of the Silk RoadandTo a Mountain in Tibet(all available in Vintage). In 2010 Colin Thubron became President the Royal Society of Literature.

Colin Thubron has been described as 'one of the two or three best living travel writers, in some ways probably the best' - Independent>