Colin Thubron

Chapter One ACROSS WHITE RUSSIAIhad been afraid of Russia ever since I could remem-ber. When I was a boy its mass dominated the map which covered the classroom wall; it was tinted a wan green, I recall, and was distorted by Mercator's projection so that its tundras suffocated half the world. Where...

Preface This four-month walk through the mountains and coasts of Lebanon describes a world irrecoverably gone. Already in 1967 the country's fragile unity was showing strain, and some were saying that the survival of its delicately balanced government into the 1970s would be a miracle. Yet in...

I Dawn In the dawn the land is empty. A causeway stretches across the lake on a bridge of silvery granite, and beyond it, pale on its reflection, a temple shines. The light falls pure and still. The noises of the town have faded away, and the silence intensifies the void - the artificial lake,...