SHADOW OF THE SILK ROAD by Colin Thubron

read by Jonathan Keeble

Thubron is a travel writer whose quiet manner invites all kinds of confidences from the people he meets along the way (speaking fluent Mandarin helps), but who makes no flashy claims for himself. Yet he is prodigiously well read and well travelled. On this 2005 trip, he is returning to some challengingly remote places, taking eight months to trace the old silk route from China to Antioch, a 7,000-mile journey that resonates with millenniums of trade, war and religion while ensnaring him in contemporary troubles. He stands awestruck before the oldest piece of paper in the world in a Chinese museum and is quarantined for Sars in the Taklamakan desert as he bears witness to a world that is remote from our own yet unbreakably connected to it. Keeble’s unassuming delivery requires close attention, but the story he tells is riveting.

(Isis £28.99 CDs, 13 hours, unabridged).

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