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Loading... Life along the Silk Roadby Susan Whitfield
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. An interesting approach to describing life along the Silk Road via fictionalized accounts of different personages: a soldier, a merchant, a courtesan, etc. The book is interesting and filled with minutiae of life and history that the author has gleaned from various period sources. I found its coverage a bit lopsided towards the Chinese end of the road. There is discussion about Central Asia's and Tibet's role in Silk Road history as well, but mainly in the beginning, and there's not enough discussion of what occurred later in the Central Asian region as it began to be influenced more and more by Islam. (  ) ivanrezansky | Feb 23, 2009 |  This book was published a few years after my first trip to Xinjiang province, Turfan, Urumchi and Dunhuang. I wish it had been the other way round, as I would have really enjoyed thinking about the people who lived their lives along the Silk Road whilst I was there myself. Very well worth reading. (  ) herschelian | Apr 19, 2007 | amira | Nov 26, 2006 |  no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com Amazon.com Review (ISBN 0520232143, Paperback)With a nod to the storytelling traditions of the ancient central Asian bazaars that it describes, Life Along the Silk Road is a wily half-breed of a history book. Mixing narrative and historic minutiae, each chapter introduces an inhabitant of the Silk Road at the end of the 10th century. Following the lives and stories of the Merchant, the Soldier, the Monk, the Courtesan, and others, Susan Whitfield brings the dramatic history of pre-Islamic central Asia down to a human scale, fleshing out the battles of conquest and trade with the details of everyday life.Whitfield is the director of the British Library-sponsored Dunhuang Project, which makes a remarkable collection of ancient Silk Road manuscripts, including those acquired by legendary explorer Sir Aurel Stein, available on the Internet. Her knowledge of this treasure trove of primary material shows throughout the book. What is the choicest cut of meat from a camel? The hump. The Chinese recipe for curing possession by demons? It involves a number of ingredients, including a broiled centipede, with all the legs removed. What ancient Silk Road town was famous for its dancing girls? Read and see. --Ken Peavler (retrieved from Amazon Thu, 07 Jan 2010 06:20:16 -0500) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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