Journey to Khiva - Softcover

Glazebrook, Philip

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0006546803 ISBN 13: 9780006546801

Publisher: Flamingo, 1993

Synopsis

This is a book of travels among the remote cities and deserts of Russian Central Asia - Bokhara and Samarkand as well as Khiva and the River Oxus - where in the last century British and Russian imperialism clashed in the Great Game to win control of the approaches to northern India. Ruled by medieval tyrants, this lawless arena attracted the knights errant of Victorian Britain and Russia (and one notable American) into a lethal tournament of shadows. As he set out into the Soviet Union when it was on the point of disintegration, Philip Glazebrook found that modern Russia has its extreme dangers too. This book was shortlisted for the 1992 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award. The author also wrote "Journey to Kars", "Captain Vinegar's Commission" and "The Gate at the End of the World".

About this title

From the Back Cover:

With a new Afterword covering events in Russian Central Asia since the collapse of the Communist régime.

'Journey to Khiva' is a book of travels among the remote cities and deserts of Russian Central Asia – Bokhara and Samarcand as well as Khiva and the River Oxus – where in the last century British and Russian imperialism clashed in the Great Game to win control of the approaches to northern India. Ruled over by medieval tyrants, this lawless arena attracted the knights errant of Victorian Britain and Russia (as well as one notable American) into a “tournament of shadows” which has long caught and held Philip Glazebrook’s imagination. As he set out on his travels into a Soviet Union on the point of disintegration, Glazebrook found that modern Russia has its extreme physical dangers too.

Shortlisted for the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award 1992.

“A vivid and sometimes disturbing picture of the CIS in the moral void left by defeated authoritarianism ... interlaced with the history of the ‘Great Game’”
ROGER BRAY, 'Evening Standard'

“Glazebrook has the saving virtues of insight and human sympathy, and the trick of finding words that put you alongside him as he sees the shadows lengthening and the sun dipping behind a gilt cupola”
BRENDAN WALSH, 'Catholic Herald'

“Mr Glazebrook is one of those rarities, an armchair traveller who gets out of his armchair and visits the places which others merely dream about”
PEREGRINE HODGSON, 'Spectator'

About this edition

• Publisher: Flamingo
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0006546803
• ISBN 13: 9780006546801
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 289