Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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43 of 46 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Cross Iran without your Charcoal powered Rolls Royce!, 2 Mar 2001
The Road to Oxiana is more than a travel diary, indeed it isn't really a diary at all although it reads like one, as Byron actually took several years to produce something that appears to have been written at the time. This is one of the all time classic travel books. Like Patrick Leigh Fermors' A Time of Gifts, also about a journey undertaken in 1933, this is a book by a young man who was experiencing the world at a momentous period between the two wars. Byron was 28, Fermor was even younger at just 19 and the age difference has lead to a more polished and certainly more readable style.His humour and infectious enthusiasm for the countries he travels through and the people he meets starts with an apparent disaster with the non-arrival in Beirut of the experimental, and somewhat surreal, charcoal powered Rolls Royce that he had intended to travel in with his long suffering companion Christopher Sykes. We then continue on the road in a series of unpredictable and often ramshackle vehicles and an equal collection of unpredictable and ramshackle horses and ponies whilst continually dodging the Persian secret police who were desperate to find out what on Earth these men were doing. Not for nothing is the book called the Road to Oxiana, as the River Oxus, which is ostensibly the destination, only gets a brief mention at the very end although I won't spoil the story by saying how. No, this is a book of a journey and the care and time that Byron took over his choice of words draws the reader into the extraordinary life of Iran at the peak of the Peacock throne, from unbelievable wealth to grinding poverty. We travel the length and breadth of this huge and truly spectacular country, about two thirds the size of the European Union with enormous mountain ranges and vast deserts all faithfully illustrated by Byrons' pen. I first read the book whilst travelling around Iran myself and have returned to the book with increasing pleasure several times. I promise that you don't need to visit Iran to love this book although be warned it may make you want to go there as well.
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28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fabulous, 8 Feb 2002
Byron travelled through what was Persia and Afghanistan, between the wars, when apparently nobody from England stayed at home.The depth and wit of Byron's writing is marvellous. He very efficiently balances a travelogue interwoven with his own observations and opinions. Most of the architectural descriptions are stunning and leave you envious. His cultural observations and some of the more ridiculous encounters he had with the locals had me laughing out loud. Based upon the current world situation if you really want to know something about the region I urge you to read this book. It's a shame his life was cut short. I can only assume any further books he could have written would have at least equalled this one.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
inspiring, 15 Feb 2005
Byron captures a particular type of traveller at a very particular time. This book is at once witty, eccentric and learned. It reads like a diary, with the throw away lines that you or I would insert for our own amusement sitting perfectly by the frustrations of uncomfortable journeys and frustrated plans in a very foreign place, along with intellectual discussions surrounding Persian architecture and its place as an equal alongside the great European masterpieces. The author, however, saves his most poisonous (and therefore hilarious) barbs for the ridiculously pompous and arrogant Europeans whom he comes across, in particular the rude and self-important Herzfeld, the archeologist chosen by the University of Chicago to excavate Persepolis, who treats this marvel of the ancient world as his own private preserve.The story goes that Byron wrote this "diary" on his return, re-jigging events and dialogues with the luxury of time in the comfort of England. This would explain the book's sharp wit and canny construction. Recently, however, I heard that his diaries from the trip had been unearthed, revealing that everything in the book is taken verbatim from his diaries, only with some editorial pruning after the event rather than rewriting everything de-novo. Whilst altering the myth, this in my eyes makes his achievement even more remarkable, making his stories even more entertaining with the certainty of their verity. A great book. I never thought I would want to visit Iran, but this book has changed that.
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