Rating: 
Summary: Prose of grave beauty
Review: A classic of erudite travel writing--about as far as you can get from PJ O'Rourke or Bill Bryson. Byron is astoundingly well-informed--or at least gives this impression. A glimpse of a lost world, swept away by AK-47s and landmines.
Rating: 
Summary: One of the greatest travel books, at least.
Review: A wonderful book: some of the best descriptions of architecture in English; comic dialogue; observations on the politics of the countries he travels through - and the sense of a robust, awkward, narrator throughout.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting
Review: An excellent account of life in the islamic world in the pre-war era (pre WWII I need point out) this book might very well come back into fashion given the heightened significance of Afghanistan and Persia in American life. Byron himself is almost a characature of the aristocratic Brit (noble and arrogant at the same time) and this will rub each reader differently. Nevertheless, he offers a compelling and amazingly accurate depiction of life in these parts before the modern life had begun to make its way, haltingly to these parts.
Rating: 
Summary: Dry As Toast
Review: Another travel essayist whose work I recently read called "The Road to Oxiana" the "greatest travel book ever written". Sorry to say, I found it dry as toast and couldn't manage the energy to finish it. The problem lies mostly with the author's understated British sense of humor, which in this case is taken to an extreme. Too bad. I wanted to like it.
Rating:
Summary: The ONE
Review: As the other reviews assert,this is not only Byron's best work, but perhaps the best travel book written during travel writing's Golden Age (the Thirties). It is also a beautiful account of a magnificent journey that would be impossible today. The opening description of swimming in the sea off Venice as being like bathing in "hot saliva" makes me laugh every time.
Rating:
Summary: The ONE
Review: As the other reviews assert,this is not only Byron's best work, but perhaps the best travel book written during travel writing's Golden Age (the Thirties). It is also a beautiful account of a magnificent journey that would be impossible today. The opening description of swimming in the sea off Venice as being like bathing in "hot saliva" makes me laugh every time.
Rating:
Summary: The book that's taking me to Iran
Review: I don't understand one of your other reviewers comments that he found the book "as dry as toast". For me it was an experience that I savoured and prolonged as long as I could as I took in the descriptions of the various cities and ruins and enjoyed a very understated delivery style. I particularly enjoyed the fact that he didn't attempt to talk up his experiences but instead let his enthusiasm, especially for the architecture, appear without him having to emphasise it. Once I'd finished it I knew I wanted to go, copy in hand, to Iran for myself and see what had remained and what else had been destroyed since it was written. Both for the prose and the subject matter, this was definitely one of the best books I have read in the last five years. I'm leaving in two months to try and find my own Road to Oxiana.
Rating:
Summary: Byron's Less-Travelled Road
Review: I first read Byron's best travel book in 1982 whilst in the midst of an epic year long trip myself. I now have about 4 copies of the book and an original signed copy with Byron's pictures in it(which are equally brilliant as his prose).His book kindled in me a desire to see all that he had seen and to further explore Islamic architecture and archaeology. After numerous forays into the Near East and a Masters in Near Eastern and Middle Eastern cultures--I am still searching. One can't really appreciate Byron's description of the Sheikh Lutfallah Mosque in Isfahan unless you actually have been there--standing under the immense dome in subdued yellow light. I had that priviledge last year and Byron's description does justice to the magnificent structure. Byron's eye for detail is unmatched in most other travel books and his humour is endless. I had the luck to find "Four Loyalties" by his travelling companion--Christopher Sykes in a book sale in Dubai, UAE. Sykes paints a wonderful portrait of Byron. It's a pity that Byron died so young as I think he is one of the better travel writers--definitely my favourite. Unfortunately, as Bruce Chatwin pointed out in one introduction to "The Road to Oxiana" that you won't be able to drink green tea and eat mulberries under the shade of a plane tree in Istalif, Afghanistan. Those halcyon days that Byron and Sykes experienced and later by Levi and Chatwin are the stuff of legends. "The Road to Oxiana" is a good starting point. Go there now. Good reading.
Rating:
Summary: A travel with a book, a book to travel with....
Review: In my opinion this book belongs to the aristocracy of travel literature, that old tradition beginning with Erodoto's 'Historiai'. You can see all the nuances of the sky over the islamic temples and the ancient babylonian ruins the author decribes so well, taste the flavour of the tea offered around the fire, hear the whispers in the moonlight or the loud voices of an oriental market, feel the sandy wind blowing on your face. I think no modern traveller was as able as Byron to blend together such cunning observations about society, history, landscape, art and people of the countries he travelled, without being pictoresque, or self-centered. You often feel yourself travelling with the author. Don't miss it!!!!
Rating:
Summary: Persia and Afghanistan When the Going Was Good
Review: In the crepuscular post-September 11 world I find myself in, I thought I would go and read some of the classics of travel in the Middle East back when the going was good. Byron's OXIANA looked promising, so I curled up with it for a few enchanting days.Byron was no lover of pre-packaged tourist sights. He begins by slurring Venice, where he begins his journey. Later, he slams the Taj Mahal and the Alhambra as examples of what he did NOT want to see in the Middle East. At first, I was not sure where the book was going: Byron comes across at first as one of those hypereducated upper class twits who pop in and out of Evelyn Waugh's novels. Fortunately, it turns out to be just one of the author's favorite personas he assumes from time to time. Over half a century ago, he saw clearly what would happen to Palestine when the British pulled out, namely, that the Jews and Arabs would be at each other's throats. As he reaches Iran we finally begin to see what Byron is really after: He travels from one old mosque or ruin to another. Although none of places he describes in such loving detail are known to me, it was easy to see that here was a man who wanted to be one of the first to see some marvel of architecture and capture it in photographs and in prose before the forces of time would destroy it utterly. In the process of going from place to place, he describes the Europeans and locals he meets with humor and shrewdness. The Middle East was not the easiest place to travel in the 1930s, and Byron ran into some almost insurmountable obstacles which he typically surmounts. One such is his arrival in Aghanistan's high country too late in the season. He backtracks to Persia and waits six months until he could return in the spring. I highly recommend ROAD TO OXIANA to all who wish the world was safe and innocent enough for us to pursue our own Oxianas, wherever they may be.
|
