This audiobook and its narration are excellent. The work is a travelogue, a memoir, and an engaging lesson on the history and ethics of science. Its foundation is Harris’s drive to explore and her adventure-filled bicycle trip along the Silk Road. Narrator Amy Landon has a warm, conversational voice marked by a slight breathiness and drawn-out vowels at the end of many sentences. Her tone reflects what’s happening on any given page; she sounds amused when that is appropriate and more serious when tackling the science-related sections. Landon maintains the listener’s interest throughout. That is a true achievement, given that the audiobook is told largely through narrative and there is limited opportunity to take advantage of dialogue to provide the variety of different voices. G.S. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

As a young girl growing up in rural Canada, Harris dreamed of the far-off lands Polo described, igniting an obsession with the world beyond the farthest bend in the road. Lands of Lost Borders is the gift Harris sends back from that beyond. Say what you want about the value of experience and the power of wisdom, there's something undeniably intoxicating about the blank page of youth being written upon. And write Harris can. With elegant, sensitive prose, she takes the reader along on her travels, shares her passion with infectious enthusiasm and invites us into her heart…We sweat every illegal checkpoint crossing, chew on every grain of dust-storm sand and sip every cup of yak butter tea right along with her. That she is able to cast and maintain such a spell of wonder is no small feat. To say that Harris has become the explorer she always wanted to be is the highest praise I can think to offer.

04/09/2018
Nature writer and adventurer Harris details her bike journey along the Silk Road, in this beautifully rendered if sometimes slow-moving debut. Growing up, Harris wanted to be an explorer; when she got older, however, she went to Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship and later to MIT where she found the drudgery of the laboratory unbearable. As an escape, she and her best friend, Mel, planned their bike adventure and were soon pedaling along the Silk Road, starting on the pungent banks of the Black Sea (“The bottom waters are poor in oxygen but rich in hydrogen sulphide, a colourless, poisonous gas that reeks of rotten eggs”). They biked across often treacherous landscapes (and took planes or trains along routes inaccessible by bike) through Turkey, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, India, Nepal, and China; they ascended mountains and traversed river valleys. The trip concluded at the Siachen Glacier in the Himalayas at the edge of the Tibetan plateau, where “the wind was more alive than the branches it moved, and so big it could only be the mountains breathing.” Harris’s talent is in her prose, as she offers breathtaking descriptions of the Silk Road, shrouded in mystery and wonder. (Aug.)

Lands of Lost Borders carried me up into a state of openness and excitement I haven’t felt for years. It’s a modern classic.” — Pico Iyer

“Kate Harris arrives among us like a meteor – a hurtling intelligence, inquiring into the nature of political borders and the meaning of crossing over. Her sheer determination to explore what she does not know compels you to travel happily alongside her in Lands of Lost Borders.” — Barry Lopez, author of Arctic Dreams, winner of the National Book Award

“A hymn to the pure love of travel: a brave and astonishing journey.” — Colin Thubron, author of To a Mountain in Tibet and Shadow of the Silk Road

“There’s something undeniably intoxicating about the blank page of youth begin written upon. And write Harris can. With elegant, sensitive prose, she takes the reader along on her travels, shares her passion with infectious enthusiasm and invites us into her heart.” — New York Times Book Review

“Kate Harris has an explorer’s brave heart, a scholar’s cataloging brain, and a writer’s keen eye. She beautifully captures what it means to cross borders, both geographic and psychic, as one embarks on the grand adventure that is growing up.” — Rachel Friedman, author of The Good Girl’s Guide to Getting Lost

“This fascinating book, about an unbridled desire for exploration, completely thrilled me. Getting to ride alongside Kate on her Silk Road journey is the literary adventure of a lifetime.” — Leigh Stein, author of Land of Enchantment

“With humor, deep sentiment, and often poetic prose, Harris takes the reader not only through “the stans” (Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, etc.) of Asia, but also through the history and current state of adventure travel…Exemplary travel writing: inspiring, moving, heartfelt, and often breathtaking.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Beautifully rendered...Harris’s talent is in her prose, as she offers breathtaking descriptions of the Silk Road, shrouded in mystery and wonder.”   — Publishers Weekly

“In her luminous, incisive memoir, Harris chronicles her permanent wanderlust, her twisting career path and the months she spent cycling the Silk Road with her best friend...Lyrical, brilliant and sharply observed, it is a paean to wanderlust and a call for readers to launch their own explorations.” — Shelf Awareness

“Her captivating memoir will inspire readers to question their self-imposed boundaries and map out new adventures.” — Real Simple

“A compelling, suspenseful, insightful and elegant travel memoir. This is one that will have you dreaming.” — Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Harris’ stunning and nuanced prose limns sweeping landscapes and offers engaging history lessons—all while maintaining a brilliant self-awareness and authenticity. Lands of Lost Borders is illuminating, heart-warming, and hopeful in its suggestion that we will explore not to conquer but to connect.” — Booklist (starred review)

“An immersive and keenly observed debut...an uncompromising, breathless record.” — New York Journal of Books

Her captivating memoir will inspire readers to question their self-imposed boundaries and map out new adventures.

Kate Harris has an explorer’s brave heart, a scholar’s cataloging brain, and a writer’s keen eye. She beautifully captures what it means to cross borders, both geographic and psychic, as one embarks on the grand adventure that is growing up.

In her luminous, incisive memoir, Harris chronicles her permanent wanderlust, her twisting career path and the months she spent cycling the Silk Road with her best friend...Lyrical, brilliant and sharply observed, it is a paean to wanderlust and a call for readers to launch their own explorations.

Kate Harris arrives among us like a meteor – a hurtling intelligence, inquiring into the nature of political borders and the meaning of crossing over. Her sheer determination to explore what she does not know compels you to travel happily alongside her in Lands of Lost Borders.

There’s something undeniably intoxicating about the blank page of youth begin written upon. And write Harris can. With elegant, sensitive prose, she takes the reader along on her travels, shares her passion with infectious enthusiasm and invites us into her heart.

Lands of Lost Borders carried me up into a state of openness and excitement I haven’t felt for years. It’s a modern classic.

A hymn to the pure love of travel: a brave and astonishing journey.

This fascinating book, about an unbridled desire for exploration, completely thrilled me. Getting to ride alongside Kate on her Silk Road journey is the literary adventure of a lifetime.

Harris’ stunning and nuanced prose limns sweeping landscapes and offers engaging history lessons—all while maintaining a brilliant self-awareness and authenticity. Lands of Lost Borders is illuminating, heart-warming, and hopeful in its suggestion that we will explore not to conquer but to connect.

A compelling, suspenseful, insightful and elegant travel memoir. This is one that will have you dreaming.

An immersive and keenly observed debut...an uncompromising, breathless record.

Lands of Lost Borders carried me up into a state of openness and excitement I haven’t felt for years. It’s a modern classic.

04/01/2018
In childhood, Harris dreamed of being an explorer, and pedaling down the Silk Road with a friend showed her what modern exploration is: not charting boundaries but passing beyond one's own. With a 75,000-copy first printing.

★ 2018-05-15
A debut travelogue chronicling a modern explorer's bicycle ride along the ancient Silk Road, a journey that beautifully reveals much about the history and nature of exploration itself."Born centuries too late for the life I was meant to live," Harris cultivated an early love affair with wilderness, exploration, and the unknown. Due to a chance encounter with a children's book, the author became particularly intrigued by Marco Polo, and she "decided to be just like him when I grew up." Though she studied at such prestigious institutions as Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar, and MIT, school was merely "a venue…for exploration." While the narrative is peppered with brief, entertaining vignettes about some of the author's early travels, the meat of her story is the nearly yearlong bike ride following the Silk Road with her pal Mel. With humor, deep sentiment, and often poetic prose, Harris takes the reader not only through "the stans" (Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, etc.) of Asia, but also through the history and current state of adventure travel. Along the way, the author provides insightful discussions of national borderlines, for which she clearly has little use. "The more I learned about the South Caucasus, with its closed borders and warring enclaves," she writes, "the more the place seemed like a playground game of capture-the-flag, all in the dubious name of nationalism." This is a tale of beautiful contrasts: broken landscapes and incomparable mountain vistas, repugnant sights and smells and euphoric baklava hangovers, geographic neighbors at war and the moving hospitality of total strangers. Harris explains the grueling and sublime nature of biking through descriptions of impoverished yet beautiful places as well as the fraught history and hopeful future of her kind. "Explorers might be extinct, in the historic sense of the vocation," she writes, "but exploring still exists, will always exist: In the basic longing to learn what in the universe we are doing here."Exemplary travel writing: inspiring, moving, heartfelt, and often breathtaking.