Narrator Jonathan Keeble deftly conveys the majesty of the Amur River, which runs between Russia and China, while also realistically introducing 80-year-old author Colin Thubron. Listeners accompany him and various escorts, guides, and locals through Mongolia and Russia. Keeble’s evocative descriptions of the vastly different settings, food and drink (aplenty), and colorful characters are center stage. Riveting historical, political, and geographical details abound, and the mutual hatred between the Chinese and Russians is palpable. Most pleasurable are Thubron’s well-rendered conversations with individuals, some in Mandarin and Russian. The Amur—still a highly contested border—is always gloriously present, adding to this exhilarating listen. S.G.B. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine
The Amur River: Between Russia and China
Narrated by Jonathan Keeble
Colin ThubronUnabridged — 10 hours, 12 minutes
The Amur River: Between Russia and China
Narrated by Jonathan Keeble
Colin ThubronUnabridged — 10 hours, 12 minutes
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Overview
""A gripping read with fascinating political insight."" (Sunday Times, London)
""Elegant, elegiac and poignant...Thubron is an intrepid traveler, a shrewd observer and a lyrical guide... to the river, much of it along the border between these two powers at a time of rapid and tense reconfiguration of global geopolitics."" (Washington Post)
The most admired travel writer of our time-author of Shadow of the Silk Road and To a Mountain in Tibet-recounts an eye-opening, often perilous journey along a little known Far East Asian river that for over a thousand miles forms the highly contested border between Russia and China.
The Amur River is almost unknown. Yet it is the tenth longest river in the world, rising in the Mongolian mountains and flowing through Siberia to the Pacific. For 1,100 miles it forms the tense border between Russia and China. Simmering with the memory of land-grabs and unequal treaties, this is the most densely fortified frontier on earth.
In his eightieth year, Colin Thubron takes a dramatic journey from the Amur's secret source to its giant mouth, covering almost 3,000 miles. Harassed by injury and by arrest from the local police, he makes his way along both the Russian and Chinese shores, starting out by Mongolian horse, then hitchhiking, sailing on poacher's sloops or travelling the Trans-Siberian Express. Having revived his Russian and Mandarin, he talks to everyone he meets, from Chinese traders to Russian fishermen, from monks to indigenous peoples. By the time he reaches the river's desolate end, where Russia's nineteenth-century imperial dream petered out, a whole, pivotal world has come alive.
The Amur River is a shining masterpiece by the acknowledged laureate of travel writing, an urgent lesson in history and the culmination of an astonishing career.
Editorial Reviews
★ 07/19/2021
Novelist and travel writer Thubron (Night of Fire) evokes in this breathtaking account the beauty and harshness of the 1,100-mile-long Amur River that forms the border between Russia and China. Setting out on horseback from the river’s source in Mongolia, where a campfire is “the sole human light seen only by wolves or woken bears,” Thubron travels by sailboat, train, and car to the Russian town of Nikolaevsk-na-Amure, where, “thick with silt and pollution,” the Amur empties into the Pacific Ocean. He writes sensitively and cogently about the life along the river’s shores, profiling the semi-nomadic Buryats, whom Stalin and his Mongolian counterpart, Khorloogiin Choibalsam, persecuted relentlessly in the 1930s, and the Manchu, who rose up from the region in the 17th century and ruled China for nearly 300 years. In desolate villages, aged cities, crumbling monasteries, and roadside shrines, Thubron documents the interplay of politics and history, contrasting the “subdued fatalism” of Russians living in the river basin with the bustling optimism of the Chinese, whose glitzy restaurants and markets mask signs of discontent. Thubron’s powers of observation and his dogged determination to complete this arduous journey—despite numerous injuries and a police interrogations—make this a top-notch travelogue. Agent: Clare Alexander, Aitken Alexander Assoc. (Sept.)
"Elegant, elegiac and poignant...Thubron is an intrepid traveler, a shrewd observer and a lyrical guide... to the river, much of it along the border between these two powers at a time of rapid and tense reconfiguration of global geopolitics." — Washington Post
“When a river runs through a good book, a current of expectations irresistibly carries readers along…On this subarctic odyssey, each bend of the Amur brings new sights, new characters, and new revelations… For over a thousand miles, the Amur marks the boundary between two nations, and it is there, crisscrossing the border, that Thubron sees the contrast between an empire in decline and one on the rise.” — Natural History Magazine
“A breathtaking account of the beauty and harshness of the 1,100-mile-long Amur River that forms the border between Russia and China. . . . Thubron documents the interplay of politics and history, contrasting the “subdued fatalism” of Russians living in the river basin with the bustling optimism of the Chinese, whose glitzy restaurants and markets mask signs of discontent. . . . A top-notch travelogue.” — Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
“Enthralling… A captivating portrait of a remote region of the world… evoking with beautiful detail and compassion its rich history and culture." — Kirkus (Starred Review)
“The Amur River shows Thubron to be at the peak of his powers… as one of our greatest prose writers in any genre. But The Amur River is not just beautifully written: it is also a work of great importance…Thubron uses the Amur River as a metaphor to deal with the relationship of two countries now regarded by many as the greatest threat to the West in these dying days of the U.S. Imperium.” — Daily Telegraph
"A gripping read with fascinating political insight." — Sunday Times (London)
"A journey from a sacred Mongolian source down a river that is also a fault line of history, where empires divide and rivalries begin...The most eloquent travel writer in Britain...found a psychic salve in the Amur, whose rugged beauty enchants him even as its history fills him with dread." — Wall Street Journal
"A mesmerizing trip down Far East Asia's most consequential river reveals the twists and turns of history and politics...It is the troubling tension between Russia and China that lies at the heart of Thubron's book...A poignant contribution to Thubron's acclaimed career, with his trademark lyricism elevating nature to a central breathing character that often reflects the ambivalence of its human counterparts." — BookBrowse.com
"An extraordinary journey...People are characterized with great sympathy...Thubron writes brilliantly about the region's wildlife and folklore...Moments of humour leaven the atmosphere...One can only marvel that Thubron completed his journey and be thankful that this marvelous book came out of it." — Times Literary Supplement (London)
“Unlike such peers as the Mississippi and the Nile, the Amur is a source of division, with anxiety and distrust seething on both banks….Veteran travel writer Colin Thubron weaves in historical anecdotes, such as the freedom Chekhov felt while sailing down the river to interview convicts in Sakhalin, and his stopover with a Japanese prostitute in Blagoveschensk." — The New Yorker
The Amur River shows Thubron to be at the peak of his powers… as one of our greatest prose writers in any genre. But The Amur River is not just beautifully written: it is also a work of great importance…Thubron uses the Amur River as a metaphor to deal with the relationship of two countries now regarded by many as the greatest threat to the West in these dying days of the U.S. Imperium.
"A mesmerizing trip down Far East Asia's most consequential river reveals the twists and turns of history and politics...It is the troubling tension between Russia and China that lies at the heart of Thubron's book...A poignant contribution to Thubron's acclaimed career, with his trademark lyricism elevating nature to a central breathing character that often reflects the ambivalence of its human counterparts."
Unlike such peers as the Mississippi and the Nile, the Amur is a source of division, with anxiety and distrust seething on both banks….Veteran travel writer Colin Thubron weaves in historical anecdotes, such as the freedom Chekhov felt while sailing down the river to interview convicts in Sakhalin, and his stopover with a Japanese prostitute in Blagoveschensk."
When a river runs through a good book, a current of expectations irresistibly carries readers along…On this subarctic odyssey, each bend of the Amur brings new sights, new characters, and new revelations… For over a thousand miles, the Amur marks the boundary between two nations, and it is there, crisscrossing the border, that Thubron sees the contrast between an empire in decline and one on the rise.”
"Elegant, elegiac and poignant...Thubron is an intrepid traveler, a shrewd observer and a lyrical guide... to the river, much of it along the border between these two powers at a time of rapid and tense reconfiguration of global geopolitics."
"A gripping read with fascinating political insight."
"A journey from a sacred Mongolian source down a river that is also a fault line of history, where empires divide and rivalries begin...The most eloquent travel writer in Britain...found a psychic salve in the Amur, whose rugged beauty enchants him even as its history fills him with dread."
"An extraordinary journey...People are characterized with great sympathy...Thubron writes brilliantly about the region's wildlife and folklore...Moments of humour leaven the atmosphere...One can only marvel that Thubron completed his journey and be thankful that this marvelous book came out of it."
"Elegant, elegiac and poignant...Thubron is an intrepid traveler, a shrewd observer and a lyrical guide... to the river, much of it along the border between these two powers at a time of rapid and tense reconfiguration of global geopolitics."
"A journey from a sacred Mongolian source down a river that is also a fault line of history, where empires divide and rivalries begin...The most eloquent travel writer in Britain...found a psychic salve in the Amur, whose rugged beauty enchants him even as its history fills him with dread."
Unlike such peers as the Mississippi and the Nile, the Amur is a source of division, with anxiety and distrust seething on both banks….Veteran travel writer Colin Thubron weaves in historical anecdotes, such as the freedom Chekhov felt while sailing down the river to interview convicts in Sakhalin, and his stopover with a Japanese prostitute in Blagoveschensk."
"Elegant, elegiac and poignant...Thubron is an intrepid traveler, a shrewd observer and a lyrical guide... to the river, much of it along the border between these two powers at a time of rapid and tense reconfiguration of global geopolitics."
The Amur River shows Thubron to be at the peak of his powers… as one of our greatest prose writers in any genre. But The Amur River is not just beautifully written: it is also a work of great importance…Thubron uses the Amur River as a metaphor to deal with the relationship of two countries now regarded by many as the greatest threat to the West in these dying days of the U.S. Imperium.”
When a river runs through a good book, a current of expectations irresistibly carries readers along…On this subarctic odyssey, each bend of the Amur brings new sights, new characters, and new revelations… For over a thousand miles, the Amur marks the boundary between two nations, and it is there, crisscrossing the border, that Thubron sees the contrast between an empire in decline and one on the rise.”
"SHADOW OF THE SILK ROAD is moving in a way that's rare in travel literature, sidestepping nostalgia even as it notes its pull...Thubron goes to places most other sojourners can't—because they're not so much geographic locations as states of mind, formed from the lifelong accretion of intriguing facts, mistaken hopes, mysteries."
"Lyrical, erudite, infused with human warmth, and informed by a curiosity that seems as limitless as a desert horizon...Thubron adds to our understanding a dimension of humanity that would otherwise have gone unrecognized."
"Thubron has done it all, with sparkling grace...His is an experience of transformation, fittingly, for if the Silk Road was anything, it was an agent of kaleidoscopic transformation."
"Colin Thubron, a sublime travel writer in the tradition of Freya Stark and Patrick Leigh Fermor . . . captures the most evocative details in the landscape and in the lives of ordinary people with lyricism, compassion, and wit."
"An intrepid, resourceful, and immensely talented writer. . . . An uncommonly interesting book."
"An intrepid, resourceful, and immensely talented writer...An uncommonly interesting book."
"Lyrical, erudite, infused with human warmth, and informed by a curiosity that seems as limitless as a desert horizon...Thubron adds to our understanding a dimension of humanity that would otherwise have gone unrecognized."
"SHADOW OF THE SILK ROAD is moving in a way that's rare in travel literature, sidestepping nostalgia even as it notes its pull...Thubron goes to places most other sojourners can't—because they're not so much geographic locations as states of mind, formed from the lifelong accretion of intriguing facts, mistaken hopes, mysteries."
"Colin Thubron, a sublime travel writer in the tradition of Freya Stark and Patrick Leigh Fermor...captures the most evocative details in the landscape and in the lives of ordinary people with lyricism, compassion, and wit."
"Thubron has done it all, with sparkling grace...His is an experience of transformation, fittingly, for if the Silk Road was anything, it was an agent of kaleidoscopic transformation."
Narrator Jonathan Keeble deftly conveys the majesty of the Amur River, which runs between Russia and China, while also realistically introducing 80-year-old author Colin Thubron. Listeners accompany him and various escorts, guides, and locals through Mongolia and Russia. Keeble’s evocative descriptions of the vastly different settings, food and drink (aplenty), and colorful characters are center stage. Riveting historical, political, and geographical details abound, and the mutual hatred between the Chinese and Russians is palpable. Most pleasurable are Thubron’s well-rendered conversations with individuals, some in Mandarin and Russian. The Amur—still a highly contested border—is always gloriously present, adding to this exhilarating listen. S.G.B. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine
★ 2021-07-18
The celebrated British travel writer takes us on a fascinating journey along the Amur River.
In his latest adventure, octogenarian Thubron planned to follow the river “as it flows through south-east Siberia then meets China, then breaks for the Pacific.” For more than 1,000 of its 2,600 miles (which includes its source river, the Argun), the Amur forms the border between the Russian Far East and northeastern China. The Chinese call it Heilongjiang, which means “Black Dragon River, for the dragon’s imperial grandeur.” One of his first guides, a Mongolian horseman, warned him about the dangerous, “almost impassable” landscape. Shortly after starting out, the author suffered an injury, which forced him to question his body’s ability to keep up—yet, as always, he persevered. Standing out as a foreigner in a region that rarely hosts travelers, Thubron became the object of covert attention. Often, this curiosity resulted only in extended gazes and innocent questions, but he also endured numerous police interrogations and a nagging fear that he was being followed. Accompanied by various guides, the author made his way through this vast, unforgiving territory by car, boat, and train, evoking with beautiful detail and compassion its rich history and culture. Though the region is shrouded with mistrust, Thubron effectively brings it to life. Throughout his trip, the author engaged in discussions with local residents, who openly shared their personal feelings and histories as if they were longtime friends. Many villagers lamented the loss of their native cultures and offered conflicting views about the ownership of the region. The Chinese spoke of Russian land grabs and the profound unease of Chinese artifacts lying inside Russian borders, while Mongolians and Russians claimed that the Chinese were stripping the land and infiltrating every aspect of business. Thubron also laments the demise of the region’s Indigenous cultures and languages. Readers will, too, as they savor this enthralling travel narrative.
A captivating portrait of a remote region of the world that many readers may know nothing about.
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940176224641 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HarperCollins |
| Publication date: | 09/21/2021 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
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