Paperback: 363 pages
Publisher: Harper Perennial 2006

It is almost as Colin Thubron is one of us. A hobo, a tramp, a bum. For us there is no difference. However, Wikipedia explains rather convincingly that there is one: "Hobos differentiate themselves as travelers who are homeless and willing to do work, whereas a tramp travels but will not work and a bum does neither."

Of course, Thubron is none of the above and is a clear-cut genius in his approach to travelling and writing. His style can be judged in his beautifully crafted sentences about people, current affairs and relevant abstract topics in far-away places. Most importantly, everything happens now and in history - regarding China and the Silk Road in a time span of some odd thousands of years.

"Sometimes you feel yourself weightless, thinned. You draw back the curtains (if there are any) on a rectangle of wasteland at dawn, and realise that you are cast adrift from everything that gave you identity. Thousands of miles from anyone who knows you, you have the illusion that your past is lighter, scarcely yours at all. Even your ties of love have been attenuated (the emergency satellite phone is in my rucksack, and nobody calls). Dangerously, you may come to feel invulnerable. You fear only your failure to understand or to reach where you are going. Sometimes you are moved by a kind of heartless curiosity, which shames you only on your return home. At other times you are touched, even torn; but you move on." p. 114-115

Check out: Colin Thubron @ The New York Review of Books

Second Opinion: Lorraine Adams / NY Times

¶ 10/02/2008 01:33:00 ap.