The Road to Oxiana
Robert Byron
Discover the ultimate in classic 1930s travel writing.
'A writer of breathtaking prose – prose whose sensuous, chiselled beauty has cast its spell on English travel writing ever since' William Dalrymple
In 1933, the delightfully eccentric, Robert Byron set out on a journey through the Middle East via Beirut, Jerusalem, Baghdad and Tehran to Oxiana – the country of the Oxus, the ancient name for the river Amu Darya which formed part of the border between Afghanistan and the Soviet Union. His journey ended in what is now Peshawar, Pakistan.
While his arrival at his destination, the legendary tower of Qabus, is a wonder, the journey itself is a captivating, quirky record of his adventures and a rare account of the architectural treasures of a region now lost to time and conflict.
‘Funny, didactic and biting, Byron's masterpiece transports us across the world and, better still, across the decades’ Independent
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About Robert Byron
Reviews for The Road to Oxiana
New York Review of Books
The Road to Oxiana is part travelogue, part aesthetic manifesto and part social observation; it remains the most thoroughly readable of all books. And Byron is the ideal companion, witty, charming, irascible, and content to leave and be left alone
The Times
The Road to Oxiana is an informed, somewhat high-flown account of the early Islamic architecture of Persia and Afghanistan wrapped in a comic narrative that ensured a far wider readership... Funny, didactic and biting, Byron's masterpiece transports us across the world and, better still, across the decades to splendidly alien lands
Independent
My favourite travel book is Robert Byron's The Road To Oxiana, which started a new wave of travel writing. I took it on my first trip to Iran. I always take books about the places I'm visiting: I sat in a ruined mosque now populated by sheep and read Byron's wonderful descriptions of it. I think that sowed a seed for the Travel Bookshop
Sarah Anderson, founder of The Travel Bookshop I love literary travel books and this is the best one in the English language. Scholarly, eccentric and wildly opinionated
Tudor Parfitt
Geographical
Byron's account of travelling in the Middle East in 1933-34 paints an unparalleled portrait of the region and its people
Samuel Muston
Independent