Central Asia Literary Guide & Suggested Booksby NATHAN H AMM on 6/26/2006 12 C O MMENTS

Salon and the Travel Channel are putting together a literary guide to the world, a collection of articles about literature from and about particular places and regions. Among the handful of articles already online is Tom Bissells on Central Asia (he also wrote the one of Vietnam and his The Father of All Things , about his first trip to Vietnam with his father, a Vietnam war veteran, is due next year). Bissells article mentions only five books, but that is, in my opinion, largely a result of the relatively small number of books about and from Central Asia that are available in English. And the numbers are even smaller when focusing exclusively on fiction. In the fiction category, Bissell recommendsThe Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years by Chingiz Aitmatov, Solzhenitsyns Cancer Ward , and Robert Rosenbergs This Is Not Civilization . I second all of these recommendations, and also suggest picking up Bissells collection of short fiction set in or connected to Central Asia, God Lives in St. Petersburg . A new review of this book appeared the other day and it is much like earlier onespositive but odd. For nonfiction, Bissell recommends Peter Hopkirks The Great Game andJihad by Ahmed Rashid. Nonfiction being a more fertile (and personally more interesting) area of works, I have many additional recommendations. As complements to The Great Game , I suggest Hopkirks Setting the East Ablaze , though a good deal of its content can be substituted with primary sourcesnamely the memoirs of Lt. Colonel F. M. Bailey in Mission to

Tashkent and Paul Nazaroff in Hunted Through Central Asia . All of these books deal with the period during which the Bolsheviks established control in the region, and Baileys is an especially enjoyable read. Where else is one as likely to find a story about a man who has infiltrated the Cheka being sent to arrest himself? Other suggestions:

Jack Weatherfords Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World is an engaging history of the Mongol Empire that is worth reading even though its thesis is too ambitious. Jason Elliots An Unexpected Light , about one of the authors trips in Afghanistan, is a rarity for travel literature in that Elliot clearly understands (though over-identifies with at times) the land he is writing about. (Reviewed earlier here) The memoirs of Sven Hedin, My Life As An Explorer , cover the authors travels throughout inner Asia. I dont remember too many particulars about Monica Whitlocks Land Beyond The River , which aspires to be a peoples history of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and northern Afghanistan from the early 20th century to present, but I do remember enjoying it quite a bit. The Man Who Would Be King: The First American In Afghanistan by Ben Macintyre is the astonishing story of Josiah Harlan, a Quaker from Chester County, Pennsylvania, who had aspirations of being a new Alexander the Great and made his way to Afghanistan, joined the fight against the British, and gained the title of Prince of Ghor. I also have to recommend Tom Bissells first book, Chasing the Sea , as it is one of my favorite reads on modern Uzbekistan.

There are some other suggestions in the comments to Bissells article, including The Baburnama . Most of these books can be had for fairly low prices used on Amazon.