Foreign Devils on the Silk Road: The Search for Lost Cities and Treasures of Chinese Central Asia (Oxford Paperbacks)
£72.95
This book is costing me money!! - After reading each spell-binding chapter, I find I am noting down the name and details of the original works quoted by Hopkirk. First, Hedin s Through Asia, then Stein s Ruins of Desert Cathay, then von Le Coq s Buried Treasures of Chinese Turkestan. These are not cheap books! My bank manager mutters about Mr Hopkirk s negligence in writing such a compellingly addictive book.Foreign Devils on the Silk Road tells the stories of European explorers who searched for - and found - legendary lost cities in the sands of the Taklamakan Desert in what is now Xinjiang province in western China. Most of the treasures were removed and sent to museums in Europe, the US, Japan and Korea, and these explorers are increasingly seen as criminals (at least in China). Regardless of the politics or the benefit of hindsight, the adventures of these men makes Indiana Jones look tame.My only complaint is that the need to cover the expeditions of all the main explorers means that each is told in a mere chapter. It just whets the appetite to know more. Hence the seemingly endless purchases of the original books.
Indiana Jones meets the Silk Road - What could have been a very good book was marred by the laste paragraph, and particularly the last sentence. Avoid reading those and it s a great read. The book brings to life the adventure and history of the Eastern Turkestan regions of the Silk Road, particularly the Indiana Jones style of the adventurer / explorer / archiologists that plundered the ancient sites at the turn of the century. Real live lost cities and daring do! It certainly has me trying to make my way to this region which it turns out I know so little about.