- Paperback: 272 pages
- Publisher: Oxford Paperbacks (20 Mar 1986)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0192851667
- ISBN-13: 978-0192851666
- Product Dimensions: 19.4 x 13 x 2.2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 479,225 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Description
Product Description
As the European revolution failed to materialize, Lenin decreed, `Let us turn our faces towards Asia. The East will help us to conquer the West.' Pieced together from secret reports and eye-witness memoirs, this is the first book to tell the story of the Bolshevik attempt to spread Marxism throughout Asia and its frustration by British Indian intelligence agents. An extraordinary story of the intrigue and treachery of the Great Game, its key players include Chinese warlords, Muslim visionaries, and a White Russian baron who roasted his Communist captives alive. This book is intended for readers of twentieth-century history with an interest in Central Asia, Russia, superpower relations, communism; fans of Hopkirk's other accounts of adventure and espionage.
About the Author
Peter Hopkirk has travelled widely over many years in the regions where his six books are set - Central Asia, the Caucasus, China, India and Pakistan, Iran, and Eastern Turkey. Before turning full-time author, he was an ITN reporter and newscaster for two years, the New York correspondent of the Daily Express, and worked for nearly twenty years on The Times: five as its chief reporter, and latterly as a Middle and Far East specialist. In the 1950s he edited the West
African news magazine Drum, sister-paper to its legendary South African namesake. Before entering Fleet Street he served as a subaltern in the King's African Rifles - in the same battalion as lance-corporal Idi AMin, later to emerge as the Ugandan tyrant. No stranger to misadventure, Hopkirk has twice beeen held in secret police cells - in Cuba and the Middle East - and has also been hijacked by Arab terrorists. His works have been translated into thirteen languages. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
African news magazine Drum, sister-paper to its legendary South African namesake. Before entering Fleet Street he served as a subaltern in the King's African Rifles - in the same battalion as lance-corporal Idi AMin, later to emerge as the Ugandan tyrant. No stranger to misadventure, Hopkirk has twice beeen held in secret police cells - in Cuba and the Middle East - and has also been hijacked by Arab terrorists. His works have been translated into thirteen languages. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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First Sentence
In the summer of 1918, a small party on ponies could be observed winding its way upwards through the silent passes of the T'ien Shan mountains, in Chinese Central Asia, heading for the Russian frontier. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
In the summer of 1918, a small party on ponies could be observed winding its way upwards through the silent passes of the T'ien Shan mountains, in Chinese Central Asia, heading for the Russian frontier. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
...'Setting the East Ablaze' is a very good and fast read. As always history proves to be more complex, hilarious and unbelievable than fiction. Hopkirk makes the characters come alive- he has so much compassion for them that you'd think they were his own inventions.
Definitely recommended!
Definitely recommended!
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
A nice followup read to Hopkirk's The Great Game, this book details the efforts between the World Wars by the Soviet Union to spread Marxism to the east. Like The Great Game, there are dashing adventurers, wily spies, lunatics, and odd characters aplenty. There are some great individual stories, such as the British agent who the Soviets hired to find himself, and several crackpots with serious delusions of grandeur. What really emerges is how tenuous Moscow's hold was on its further-flung regions, as Bolsheviks, White Russians, and native people vied for control of these regions. Ultimately, the books is less cohesive and thus less satisfying than The Great Game (and about half the size!), yet still a fun read.
Format:Paperback
In historical sequence, though not in order of being written, this is the most recent of Peter Hopkirk's Great Game books. It contains the usual cast of colourful characters undertaking daring high jinks, only this time Britain's opponents are Lenin and Stalin instead of the Tsar and Kaiser Wilhelm, and the action is spread over a wider geographical canvas. Partly as a consequence, this book feels more episodic that the prequels, but what episodes! Whether it's Enver Pasha carving his wife's name in a tree before leading a suicidal cavalry charge against Soviet machine guns, M N Roy "liberating" the Emir of Bokhara's harem, Fanny Borodin being spirited away from under the noses of the Chinese authorities or Baron Ungern-Sternberg's psychotic rampage across Mongolia, I think it's safe to predict you won't be bored.
As in his other books, Hopkirk makes extensive use of first-hand accounts written by the people involved in these events. This is both a strength - it makes you feel like you're in the thick of the action - and a weakness, since the original writers are at times a tad economical with the truth. Thus, Bailey gives no hint of what he was really up to during his months in hiding in Tashkent, whilst Alioshin's tales of serving under Ungern-Sternberg verge on the fictional. Hopkirk is aware of this and provides health warnings where appropriate.
I love these books. At school, teachers tried very hard to convince me history was dull; in Peter Hopkirk's hands, it's anything but that.
As in his other books, Hopkirk makes extensive use of first-hand accounts written by the people involved in these events. This is both a strength - it makes you feel like you're in the thick of the action - and a weakness, since the original writers are at times a tad economical with the truth. Thus, Bailey gives no hint of what he was really up to during his months in hiding in Tashkent, whilst Alioshin's tales of serving under Ungern-Sternberg verge on the fictional. Hopkirk is aware of this and provides health warnings where appropriate.
I love these books. At school, teachers tried very hard to convince me history was dull; in Peter Hopkirk's hands, it's anything but that.
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