Colin Thubron
British travel writer and novelist, author of Among the Russians (1983), Behind the Wall (1987), Shadow of the Silk Road (2006) and The Amur River (2021); president of the Royal Society of Literature from 2010 to 2017.
Colin Thubron did not write this page. ppll compiled it from their own words, each linked to the source. Is this you? · Report a mistake
Recommends rcmnd
rcmnd What they recommend 6 things — each backed by an exact quote.
Compiled by rcmnd.app, not by them: the quotes are theirs, and each links to the post it was copied from.
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Mixed on The Emperor
I still think Kapuściński is rather wonderful, because he's so good psychologically. It's very interesting what he's got to say.
fivebooks.com 22 Jul 2018
Loved Invisible Cities
I chose it for its sheer imaginative quality. I loved it almost as an extension of the travel book in the mind – the travel book that has no responsibility to where it has been because it hasn't been anywhere real, it's been in the realm of ideas and images.
fivebooks.com 22 Jul 2018
Loved A Time of Gifts
Like many people, I love the idea of this young 19-year-old gypsy going off on foot on his own, with just a pound a week, footloose and fancy free, full of delight at the world and fascination at where he's going.
fivebooks.com 22 Jul 2018
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Recommends In Patagonia
This struck me as a rather different way of travel writing. It is very individual, with stark, short passages. There's very little of him in it. This is his walking journey in lower Patagonia, split between the Argentine and Chile, published in 1977.
fivebooks.com 22 Jul 2018
Loved The Way of the World
Bouvier never wrote another book comparable to this one. I loved it for its humanity, for its footloose feeling. He says somewhere, "You think you are making a trip, but soon it is making you – or unmaking you." And you feel that he's a very vulnerable traveller. I love that sense of not having a planned journey – it might go anywhere. He travelled in this funny little car, a Fiat Topolino. I travelled in Russia in a Morris Marina, which people laughed at, and it secures your independence.
fivebooks.com 22 Jul 2018
Loved The Road to Oxiana
it's full of wonderful descriptions. It's rather like what I was saying about building a mosaic about a country. He does that marvellously, in a description of landscape, then a menu, then a conversation, often humorous or sometimes a bit mad, and then some of the finest architectural descriptions in the language.
fivebooks.com 22 Jul 2018
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