"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.
