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News from Tartary

ISBN: 9781843410034
Author: Peter Fleming
Imprint: Military and Adventure
Publication Date: Mar 2006
Format: PB
Price: £9.99
Stock Status: in stock

With masterly understatement, Peter Fleming begins this account of what is one of the true epics of adventure. With his companion, Eva Maillart, and motivated largely by curiosity, they set out across a China torn by civil war to journey through Sinkiang to British India. It had been eight years since a traveller had crossed Sinkiang; in between times, those who had entered this inhospitable and politically volatile area seldom left alive. This, China's most westerly province, was under the control of a rebel warlord supported by Stalin's Red Army. Within it there was yet further civil war and the southern oases through which Fleming and Maillart had to travel were under the control of yet another rebel force. Entering the province by a little known and almost lethal route and following the path of the Silk Road, they ended up in Kashgar before crossing the Pamirs to India.

Beautifully written and superbly observed, this is not simply a superb account of a part of the world few of us will ever see, but also a marvellous insight into the last days of the Great Game, when Britain and Russia still faced each other across a Central Asia in a state of anarchy. It is a magnificent travelogue by one of the last and greatest adventurers of Empire.

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