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Loading... The Valleys of the Assassins: and Other Persian Travels (Modern Library…by Freya Stark
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book.  TheSmarch | Nov 20, 2009 |  The valleys of the assassins are in Luristan on the border between what was then Persia (now Iran) and Iraq. Few Western travellers and no western women had dared to travel in these bandit-ridden hills before Dame Freya made her epic treasure-hunts in 1930, 1931 and 1932. The writing is superb and the scenes have if anything gained in interest from the passage of time. It was recommended by Bernard Berenson in his introductory letter to Maraini's "Secret Tibet", which was why I bought it. (  ) gibbon | Sep 2, 2008 | Having read about Freya Stark (Jane Fletcher Geniesse's "Passionate Nomad"), I decided to read something Ms. Stark herself had written. There were snippets of her writing in the biography to whet my appetite.... Ms. Stark is a very good writer: "This is a great moment, when you see, however distant, the goal of your wandering. The thing which has been living in our imagination suddenly becomes part of the tangible world." I especially enjoyed her writings about the people she met on her travels through Persia. I did get a bit bored during detailed geographic descriptions, which I think she included as part of her work for the Royal Geographic Society. Freya Stark is a good writer and a fascinating woman. Well worth reading. (  )1  LynnB | Jul 21, 2007 |  no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com (ISBN 0375757538, Paperback)First published in 1934, Freya Stark's classic tale of her travels through Persia has been reprinted once again and is just as much a gem now as when first published. At the age of 37, Stark shocked her fellow Brits by moving to Baghdad, befriending the locals, studying Arabic and the Koran, and then setting out on expeditions to remote and uncharted areas of the Islamic world by foot, donkey, camel, and car. With her fascination for secret Islamic societies, she resolved to travel to the former home of the Cult of the Assassins and locate an ancient fortress described by Marco Polo. (The founder of the cult inspired his recruits to murder through the use of hashish, hence their name Hashishin, from which we get assassin.) There was only one problem: she couldn't find the valley on her map. Intrepid and indefatigable, she found a guide to lead her across the empty Persian plains and crested mountain ranges (Stark leaping like a mountain goat while her guide huffed behind) into the practically impregnable valley. There she found the castle ruins covered with wild tulips and surrounded by breathtaking views of the Elbruz Mountains. While there, Stark charted the first accurate maps of the region. Stark also used her charm and her understanding of Persian ways to infiltrate Luristan, a dangerous and forbidden place where she hunted for Neolithic bronzes (by persuading the chief of police to help her loot graves) and searched for buried treasure. The Lurs, a mountainous tribe, were infamous for murder and thievery, but she found them "as cheerful a lot of villains as you can wish to meet, and delighted with us for being, as they said, brave enough to come among them." The Lurs were consistently generous hosts, but thought nothing of raiding her luggage while she slept (stealing being their national pastime and hence nothing to get upset about). While Stark began as an obscure and idiosyncratic adventurer, she was ultimately backed by the Royal Geographic Society, was considered one of the best adventure writers of the century, and even was knighted by the queen of England. With her lively voice and natural perceptiveness she painted a picture of a fascinating world inhabited by charming bandits and armed tribesman now largely gone. While she did it for her own pleasure, in the end, the pleasure is ours. --Lesley Reed(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:10 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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She does occasionally turn a memorable phrase, but not nearly often enough to make reading the entire book worthwhile. I will note that I do not like naked travelogues such as this one. I would have preferred lively stories about what she saw and who she met. Too often she would say she had a fascinating conversation with a local, but then not say what it was about. She was doing some sort of archeology, but what I'm not exactly sure. Looking for old daggers and bones? Never really clear.
Again, the book is not exactly "terrible", but I'm confident I will never have a hankerin' to read it again. (