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The Road to Oxiana

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In 1933, the delightfully eccentric travel writer Robert Byron set out on a journey through the Middle East via Beirut, Jerusalem, Baghdad and Teheran to Oxiana, near the border between Afghanistan and the Soviet Union. Throughout, he kept a thoroughly captivating record of his encounters, discoveries, and frequent misadventures. His story would become a best-selling travel book throughout the English-speaking world, until the acclaim died down and it was gradually forgotten. When Paul Fussell published his own book Abroad , in 1982, he wrote that The Road to Oxiana is to the travel book what " Ulysses is to the novel between the wars, and what The Waste Land is to poetry." His statements revived the public's interest in the book, and for the first time, it was widely available in American bookstores. Now this long-overdue reprint will introduce it to a whole new generation of readers. This edition features a new introduction by Rory Stewart, best known for his book The Places In
Between , about his extensive travels in Afghanistan.
Today, in addition to its entertainment value, The Road to Oxiana also serves as a rare account of the architectural treasures of a region now inaccessible to most Western travelers, and a nostalgic look back at a more innocent time.

291 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1937

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About the author

Robert Byron

37 books39 followers
Robert Byron was an English travel writer, best known for his travelogue The Road to Oxiana. He was also a noted writer, art critic and historian.

Byron was born in 1905, and educated at Eton and Merton College, Oxford. He died in 1941, during the Second World War, when the ship on which he was travelling was torpedoed by a U-Boat off Cape Wrath, Scotland, en route to Egypt.

Byron's The Road to Oxiana is considered by many modern travel writers to be the first example of great travel writing. It is an account of Byron's ten-month journey to Persia and Afghanistan in 1933-34 in the company of Christopher Sykes. Byron had previously travelled to widely different places; Mount Athos, India, the Soviet Union, Tibet. However it was in Persia and Afghanistan that he found the subject round which he forged his style of modern travel writing, when he later came to write up his account in Peking, his temporary home.

Writer Paul Fussell wrote in his 1982 book Abroad: British Literary Traveling Between The Wars that The Road to Oxiana is to the travel book what "Ulysses is to the novel between the wars, and what The Waste Land is to poetry." Travel writer Bruce Chatwin has described the book as "a sacred text, beyond criticism," and carried his copy "spineless and floodstained" on four journeys through central Asia.

However, in his day, Byron's travel books were outsold by those of writers Peter Fleming and Evelyn Waugh.

An appreciation of architecture is a strong element in Byron's writings and he was a forceful advocate for the preservation of historic buildings, and was a founder member of the Georgian Group. A philhellene, he was also amongst the pioneers in a reinterest in Byzantine History.

He attended the last Nuremberg Rally, in 1938, with Nazi sympathiser Unity Mitford. Byron knew her through his friendship with her sister Nancy Mitford, but he was an outspoken opponent of the Nazis. He died aged 35 in 1941 after his ship, the SS Jonathan Holt, was torpedoed by a u-boat in the North Atlantic.

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Displaying 1 - 30 of 223 reviews
Profile Image for Orsodimondo.
2,265 reviews2,135 followers
April 9, 2023
QUANDO VIAGGIARE ERA UN PIACERE

description
Tra il 1933 e il 1934, Robert Byron viaggiò in Palestina, Persia, Afghanistan, Turkestan.

Ho intrecciato e intervallato la lettura di questo bel libro con 'Talibani' di Ahmed Rashid, mi è sembrata una giusta abbinata.
E non mi sbagliavo: andare avanti e indietro nella Storia è servito a sentirsi 'circondato'.

Anche perché Robert Byron ha la capacità di immergerci in quello che incontra e vede, mischiando con gusto, sapienza e divertimento l'architettura antica alla gente che incontra, creando una perfetta continuità.

description
Un’immagine della Torre di Gumbad-i-Kabus scatenò il fascino di Byron per la Persia.

Meno estetizzante di Chatwin, che si portò dietro questo libro consumandolo nel corso di ripetute letture, Byron è ben provvisto del tipico humour britannico che arricchisce di brio queste pagine (come immagino riusciva a fare una spruzzata di seltz tenuto al fresco in mezzo alla neve col suo whiskey nascosto in fiaschette che venivano spacciate per succo di frutta!).

description
La nicchia (mihrab) della moschea di Ardistan, del 1158

Leggere Robert Byron è un piacere acuto come le sue osservazioni, vivo come le sue descrizioni.
E, nonostante le difficoltà e i disagi che racconta, come si fa a non desiderare forte di essere lì?

description
La Torre della Vittoria di Ghazni.

PS:
Finalmente ecco l'Asia senza complessi d'inferiorità, scriveva Byron lasciando la Persia ed entrando in Afghanistan.
Evidentemente, non incontrò Talebani sul suo cammino.

PPSS
Ma i Talebani devono averlo letto prima di distruggere i due giganteschi buddha di Bamiyan; di loro Byron dice che si tratta di arte stantia...rivoltante...priva di bellezza...Nessuno dei due possiede alcun valore artistico... e nemmeno la dignità del lavoro...
Farli esplodere è stato un gesto artistico ispirato da Byron?

description
I Talebani distruggono le statue di Buddha a Bamiyan.
Profile Image for Jeffrey Keeten.
Author 6 books250k followers
February 9, 2020
”Baalbek is the triumph of stone; of lapidary magnificence on a scale whose language, being still the language of the eye, dwarfs New York into a home of ants. The stone is peach-coloured, and is marked in ruddy gold as the columns of St. Martin-in-the-fields are marked in soot. It has a marmoreal texture, not transparent, but faintly powdered, like bloom on a plum.

Dawn is the time to see it, to look up at the Six Columns, when peach-gold and blue air shine with equal radiance, and even the empty bases that uphold no columns have a living, sunblest identity against the violet deeps of the firmament.

Look up, look up; up this quarried flesh, these thrice-enormous shafts, to the broken capitals and the cornice as big as a house, all floating in the blue. Look over the walls, to the green groves of white-stemmed poplars; and over them to the distant Lebanon, a shimmer of mauve and blue and gold and rose. Look along the mountains to the void: the desert, that stony, empty sea. Drink the high air. Stroke the stone with your own soft hands. Say goodbye to the West if you own it. And then turn, tourist, to the East.”


 photo RobertByronspassport_zps47a4705f.jpg
Robert Byron’s passport.

Robert Byron took a ten month journey through the Middle East during the years 1933-34. He took a ship to Cyprus then travelled through Palestine, Syria, Iraq, Persia, and Afghanistan. His journey ended in Peshawar, India (now part of Pakistan). This book is considered by many travel writers to be the first great piece of travel writing. Bryon was a great advocate of ancient architecture and worked feverishly during his short life to try and insure that as much of it was preserved as possible. He gets rather rapturous when describing a column, or an arch or a minaret.

”The beauty of Isfahan steals on the mind unawares. You drive about, under avenues of white tree-trunks and canopies of shining twigs; past domes of turquoise and spring yellow in a sky of liquid violet-blue, along the river patched with twisting shoals, catching that blue in its muddy silver, and lined with feather groves where the sap calls; across bridges of pale toffee brick, tier on tier of arches breaking into piled pavilions; overlooked by lilac mountains, by the Kuh-i-Sufi shaped like Punch’s hump and by other ranges receding to a line of snowy surf; and before you know how, Isfahan has become indelible, has insinuated its image into that gallery of places which everyone privately treasures.”

 photo FridayMosque2_zps14895e22.jpg
Friday Mosque in the city of Isfahan, Esfahan Province, Iran. Photograph by Robert Byron.

Isfahan was located in Persia when Byron was there... now Iran.

Bryon travels by any means possible by truck, bus, camel, horses, asses, and by foot. He even at two different times buys an automobile out of desperation to continue to reach destinations. He suffers thirst, the smell of a fresh dung heap that resides next to the stables he is bunked in, cold, heat, and the constant frustration of officials unwilling to give him travel permits to see sights he must see. He is arrested at least twice for travelling without proper documentation.

Bruce Chatwin refers to this book as "a sacred text, beyond criticism," which attests to the influence the book had on his writing and his choice of career. Chatwin always carried a copy with him and reading Chatwin is how I first discovered the existence of Robert Byron. I did develop a literary intimacy with Byron while reading this book and could think of myself as waiting anxiously for his next letter describing the wonders of what he has seen. The book reads like dispatches from a close friend, but that illusion is sometimes broken when there seems to be information missing that is the type of intimate understanding assumed between friends. His style is jocular and laced with boyish enthusiasm.

I found the book charming.

 photo NancyMitford_zpsae795aff.jpg
Nancy Mitford had hopes, had hopes. *Sigh* isn’t it always the case that everyone is in love with the wrong person.

Byron was close friends with Nancy Mitford and at one point she had hoped he would propose marriage. She was later astonished as well as shocked to discover his homosexual tastes, complaining: "This wretched pederasty falsifies all feelings and yet one is supposed to revere it." Unfortunately for Nancy, Byron was in love with “Desmond Parsons, younger brother of the 6th Earl of Rosse, who was regarded as one of the most magnetic men of his generation. They lived together in Peking, in 1934, where Desmond developed Hodgkin’s Disease, of which he died in Zurich, in 1937, when only 26 years old. Robert was left utterly devastated.” Byron’s passion for Parsons was never reciprocated.

 photo 81ef1b41-820f-42db-a726-42fc35e4dd85_zpsf05c3a19.png
Desmond Parsons and Lord Snowden at the London wedding of Princess Margaret

As a precaution on the trip Byron must change the name of the Shah in his diary in case it is confiscated. This is the conversation he had with his travelling companion, Christopher Sykes, regarding naming dictators.

”’Sh. You mustn’t mention the Shah out loud. Call him Mr. Smith.’

‘I always call Mussolini Mr. Smith in Italy.’

‘Well, Mr. Brown.’

‘No, that’s Stalin’s name in Russia.’

‘Mr. Jones then.’

‘Jones is no good either. Hitler has to have it now that Primo de Rivera is dead. And anyhow I get confused with these ordinary names. We had better call him Marjoribanks, if we want to remember whom we mean.’”


 photo muhammad-nadir-shah_zps69743e0b.jpg
Muhammad Nadir, the shah or otherwise known as Marjoribanks.

Byron does read on this trip. Early on he is reading Boswell. ”I spread my own bedding, dined off some egg, sausage, cheese, and whisky, read a little Boswell, and fell fast asleep among the aromatic herbs with my money-bags between my feet and my big hunting knife unclasped in my fist.”

They were stranded in an unfortunate section of road full of bandits and thieves thus the knife kept readily to hand.

I know I have many friends who have read Proust in the last year, as have I, so it was a special treat when he makes mention of the influence Proust is having on his writing.

”I have been reading Proust for the last three days (and begin to observe the infection of uncontrolled detail creeping into my diary). His description of how the name Guermantes hypnotized him reminds me of how the name Turkestan has hypnotized me.”

Byron’s influence on travel writing can not be denied. I have a good friend who writes travel articles for a living and he considers this book to be one of the most influential books that turned him to travelling for a living. I have been remiss for at least a decade in not reading this book sooner, as my friend has frequently reminded me. I enjoyed the unexpected humor and the grand, enthusiastic descriptions of places that Byron found so inspiring. It is always so shocking to discover that someone is dead who seemed so alive. Byron died in 1941 at age 35 when the ship he was travelling on, the SS Jonathan Holt, was torpedoed by U-97 a Type VIIC submarine in the North Atlantic. His body was never found.

May you rest in peace fair traveler.

If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at: https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten
Profile Image for William2.
783 reviews3,313 followers
January 26, 2021
Essential reading. In fact, this was such a fresh conception of the travel-amid-ruins-cum-history-cum-memoir that it has served as a model for Bruce Chatwin, Patrick Leigh Fermor, Pico Iyer, Peter Matthiessen, Jan Morris and other writers over the years. It contains a great many references to Persian and some Afghan antiquities, many of which author Byron photographed on his 1933 excursion. I was thrilled to read about these antiquities. That pleasure was made keener by the linked and annotated version of the text which is available on Google Play books. What a relief it is not to have to repeatedly enter funny spellings for the necessary background information, without which I would have found the text unreadable. Byron's original B/W photographs are available through the ebook's links as are many more current images, like this one of the Sheikh Lotf-Allah Mosque's interior. The author does show us something about the architectural styles of each of the regions' successive empires—Elamite, Achaemenid, Timurid, Ghaznavid, Seljuk, ad infinitum. Very interesting stuff, often witty, too, explicating an area of Eastern architectural history until now unknown to me. True, Byron at times delivers sneering critiques, a form of old school connoisseurship, as when the reliefs at Persepolis aren't pretty enough to suit him, or when the Buddhas of Bamiyan are roundly deprecated as "lacking any pride in their monstrous flaccid bulk." (p.271) Need I remind the reader of the international outcry that ensued when these buddhas were desecrated by the Taliban in 2001? Small-minded connoisseurship again, I'm afraid. It's the book's only flaw. The Road to Oxiana reminds me of V.S. Naipaul's Iran book, Among the Believers, though his focus was on Islam among the non-Arab peoples, both books share a certain view of the Persian character. Author Byron's intrepidity is also worth noting, too, especially when he travels to Firuzabad in southern Iran, accompanied by a squad of the Shah's policemen—ostensibly in attendance to fend off bandits—just so he can photograph and closely describe the local antiquities. The travel is unbelievably arduous at times. Something like three or four cars are totaled during the journey. As for the lodgings, well, vermin-ridden would be putting it too kindly. Vivid, highly learned and jauntily written.
Profile Image for Paul.
1,266 reviews2,041 followers
March 1, 2019
2.5 stars
This book and its writer are a bit of an enigma and I found myself liking and disliking Robert Byron in equal measure. The Road to Oxiana tells of a journey Byron made with Christopher Sykes to explore the architecture of what is now Iran and Afghanistan. If you want well written descriptions of Islamic architecture then Byron is your man; illustrated below;
“I have never encountered splendour of this kind before. Other interiors came into my mind as I stood there, to compare it with: Versailles, or the porcelain rooms at Schönbrunn, or the Doge's Palace, or St Peter's. All are rich; but none so rich. Their richness is three-dimensional; it is attended by all the effort of shadow: In the Mosque of Sheikh Lutfullah, it is a richness of light and surface, of pattern and colour only. The architectural form is unimportant. It is not smothered, as in rococo; it is simply the instrument of a spectacle, as earth is the instrument of a garden. And then I suddenly thought of that unfortunate species, modern interior decorators, who imagine they can make a restaurant, or a cinema, or a plutocrat's drawing-room look rich if given money enough for gold leaf and looking-glass. They little know what amateurs they are. Nor, alas, do their clients”
Byron was a fairly typical product of the English public school system. A snob and an aesthete with some strong opinions; he hated western art and was a champion of El Greco and he once famously described Shakespeare’s plays as “exactly the sort of thing a grocer would write”. Byron survived the era of the Bright Young Things and grew up to oppose Nazism and fascism. Having been a good friend of Evelyn Waugh, they became estranged. On Byron’s death in 1941 (he was on a boat that was torpedoed) Waugh said;
"It is not yet the time to say so but I greatly disliked Robert in his last years & think he was a dangerous lunatic better off dead."
Byron was a little too left leaning for Waugh.
Byron is a relatively detached narrator who mostly ignores the obvious dangers his party were often in and there is an amused acceptance of the hardships. His writing about architecture appears to be first rate, but he is not a good observer of people and nor does he appear very interested in them. There is the arrogance of the travelling Englishman who is apt to treat anyone as a servant.
There are some quirks in the book. It is in diary form and there were sensitivities about talking about the Shah in Iran and so he is referred to as Marjoribanks throughout. There was a poignancy in the travels in Afghanistan as the names mentioned are well known names in today’s context, for very different reasons. This is a very male book. The women are anonymous and absent. It is also possible to see the fault lines that are much sharper today and of course it is illuminated by western arrogance. Byron was an Eton and Oxford man; as is our current prime minister. Byron’s ideas come from Spengler and Clive Bell and if you want to read a travel book from the 1930s then read Patrick Leigh Fermor. However Byron does write about Islamic architecture very well, at a time when it was not fashionable to do so
Profile Image for Paul Bryant.
2,280 reviews10.6k followers
June 11, 2016
Mash-up : The Rough Guide to the Middle East with Brideshead Revisited, the whole thing written up by that saucy boy Anthony Blanche. I did immoderately love flamboyant young Anthony up to no good in the louche bars of Oxford but when he morphs into Robert Byron and swans around sneering at Johnny Foreigner then it does get a bit too too :

I went to swim at the YMCA opposite the hotel. This necessitated paying two shillings [and] changing among a lot of hairy dwarves who smelt of garlic.

This is Anthony to the very letter!

At the turnstile, that final outrage, a palsied dotard took ten minutes to write out each ticket. After which we escaped from these trivialities into the glory of Antiquity.

On Baghdad:

When the temperature drops below 110 the residents complain of the chill and get out their furs. For only one thing is it now justly famous : a kind of boil which takes nine months to heal, and leaves a scar.

Paul Fussell, a heavyweight if ever there was one, wrote in 1982 that The Road to Oxiana is to the travel book what "Ulysses is to the novel between the wars, and what The Waste Land is to poetry." And Bruce Chatwin wanted to get his copy surgically implanted into a cavity in his sacroiliac so he would never be parted.

It kind of depends on whether you throb with love-gushes as you read such passages as

While the cadent sun throws lurid copper streaks across the sand-blown sky, all the birds in Persia have gathered for a last chorus. Slowly, the darkness brings silence, and they settle themselves to sleep with diminishing flutterings, as of a child arranging its bedclothes. And then another note begins, a hot metallic blue note, timidly at first, gaining courage, throbbing without cease, until, as if the second violins had crept into action, it becomes two notes, now this, now that, and is answered from the other side of the pool by a third. Mahun is famous for its nightingales. But for my part I celebrate the frogs.

or

I have never encountered splendour of this kind before. Other interiors came into my mind as I stood there, to compare it with: Versailles, or the porcelain rooms at Schönbrunn, or the Doge's Palace, or St Peter's. All are rich; but none so rich. Their richness is three-dimensional; it is attended by all the effort of shadow: In the Mosque of Sheikh Lutfullah, it is a richness of light and surface, of pattern and colour only. The architectural form is unimportant. It is not smothered, as in rococo; it is simply the instrument of a spectacle, as earth is the instrument of a garden. And then I suddenly thought of that unfortunate species, modern interior decorators, who imagine they can make a restaurant, or a cinema, or a plutocrat's drawing-room look rich if given money enough for gold leaf and looking-glass. They little know what amateurs they are. Nor, alas, do their clients.

Me, I’m such a pleb I kind of go yeah, yeah yeah in that irritating know-it-all tone you know so well by now. I discovered I was utterly uninterested in what Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan looked like in 1932. I realised I had wandered into the wrong book by mistake. We all do that sometimes. Oops, sorry! (Close door hurriedly, face flushing madly.) The trick is to get out as quickly as possible whilst maintaining a shred of dignity. It wasn’t too hard, since I found that this book consists of sneery remarks describing how Robert gets from A to B, and what frightful but sort of delicious indignities he has to put up with; plus a lot of pure-gold comedy vignettes where he recounts conversations with amusing foreign dignitaries or station porters. It's all not a little self-congratulatory, which may be my problem with the whole genre of travel writing.

Here is an example of Robert at his most Byronesque from p 96. RB is on a bus to Meshed and a brouhaha erupts when the driver tries to collect fares. The guy sitting next to RB is involved, gets thrown off the bus but then is allowed back on.

The Pharisee sought his old place in front, by me. But now it was my turn to go mad. I would not have him near me, I said. In reply, he seized my hand, and pressing it to his prickly, saliva-trickling beard, sprayed it with kisses. A shove sent him sprawling, while I leapt out on the other side, declaring to the now befogged, exhausted and unhappy driver that rather than suffer further contact with the man, I would walk into Meshed on my own feet and keep what I owed him in my pocket.

I had decided to skip all the purply prose rhapsodies about architecture and just read the lofty insults but eventually these paled as pale as the moonlight above Turkmenistan. I parted from Mr Byron on rather frosty terms between Teheran and Kum. It was a Thursday and a donkey was chewing my ear off.
Profile Image for Hanneke.
348 reviews414 followers
January 28, 2021
After marking at least two dozen paragraphs to quote from, I gave up. Robert Byron is a writer who has at least one extremely funny wisecrack per page except when he is describing yet another dome, minaret or entrance gate with such intensity and long breath that you get bored after the description of the fiftieth monument. What makes this travelodge from 1933 so exceptional is that he travels through Iraq, Persia and Afghanistan, thus regions which are now quite impossible to travel through and which are probably lost for us to see for a very long time, if not forever. He starts out from Jerusalem and there are some pages on Palestine under British rule where he has some really deadly things to say about the idiocy of British burocracy at the time. Byron is a very daring traveller indeed. He does not mind to sleep in sheds next to a pile of camel dung, but he takes it also for granted to be celebrated by the local lords or British consuls with lots of exquisite food and wine. Very enjoyable book. I can fully understand that it was the favorite guide for Bruce Chatwin. I imagine when Chatwin needed his spirit lifted, he could just read a few pages and his mood would improve instantly!
Profile Image for Jacob Overmark.
206 reviews9 followers
January 21, 2018
I am not sure I would have liked Robert Byron, him being pretentious and self-conscious bordering the pompous, I would probably have kept a distance at dinner parties.
But, I would have listened in and smiled at his adventures in Persia and Afghanistan.

“It is the journey, not the destination”, and then again, so many destinations that I would love to go to, though in different company.
When he is at his best, he is the keen observer, enriching his observations with historical facts and never shy to ask around for more facts. He can convey to the reader the scents and colors of flowers ad grass and the felling of the rain pouring down. This is what makes a travel writer great and fit to enter the travel writer´s hall of fame.

In “The Road To Oxiana” the journey goes through Persia and Afghanistan. Robert Byron never actually gets his feet wet in the River Oxus/Amu Darja, it being too close to the borders for access, but on his way, he sees all the wonders of the area, some worth seeing – and quite a few not to his taste.

Travelling by car, lorry, train, on horseback or on mule or camel, all has its charms – and challenges – but the travel tale is never about hardship or dangers, though naturally a hint of dissatisfaction occasionally shines through, e.g. when your car is impaled on a rock hidden in a riverbed.
It most certainly was not such a pleasure ride as the lack of high pitched exclamations suggest. 10 months on the road, met by local bureaucracy, unobtainable permits, bedbugs and mosquitos must have taken its toll. Bad roads, bad weather, constant change of transport means would drive most people crazy.

But focus is set on the monuments, the architecture and the people.

I like that a lot, that is my own way of traveling and I have enjoyed the trip.
I have been revisiting places in Iran that I have seen, smiling at little things that apparently did not change in 80 years and mourning all the places I never had the chance to see.

When I years ago went Transoxania into now Uzbekistan, I regrettably had only little knowledge of the interchange between Uzbek and Persian architecture. If I had met Robert Byron at an earlier stage in my travel life I would have been able to seek out the influence of Queen Goharshad Begum who was a great patroness of architecture and art in the area during the fist half of the 15th century.

When I return to Iran I will make sure to take a copy with me to guide me to all the forgotten treasures.
If anyone should ask, Afghanistan is on my bucket list too.
Profile Image for Chavelli Sulikowska.
226 reviews253 followers
April 20, 2020
This 1937 novel is revolutionary. An incredible true account of Byron’s journey through the Middle East, this must be the epitome of travel literature.

An Oxford graduate, but certainly not of the typical Oxford mould, Byron was an unusual character – part nomad, semi historian, he had a clear sense of adventure and an inexhaustive curiosity for the big wide world. This novel depicts, from his own personal experience his step by step perilous travels through what is now modern day Iran and Afghanistan. Granted, these countries were politically and socially very different at the time of Byron’s journey – i.e. the absence of nuclear programs and Al Qaeda, however they were still largely unknown and dangerous destinations.

Accompanied by his friend Christopher Sykes, Byron set out for Oxiana (northern border of Afghanistan) via Jerusalem, Damascus and Baghdad, with the aim of tracing the origins of Islamic architecture. It took him eleven months. His experiences are documented candidly, mixing journal entries, snippets of conversation, bizarre events and the triumphs and challenges he faced along the way. Amazingly it doesn’t seem dated, even though there is no mention of blogging, instagramming or lonely planet, it is as readable and relatable as a piece of travel literature today as it was back then. He is humourous, able to roll with the punches day to day – he sees the upside in difficulties and more than anything, he is able to communicate a strong sense of collective humanity. He treats all he meets as equals. Despite his satirical tone, the parody of some of his tales and a good dose of hyperbole, it is clear he was no toffy Oxford snob.

Byron sets off from Venice, describing it as “water like hot saliva, cigar ends floating into one’s mouth, and shoals of jellyfish….” Once joined by Christopher, their real journey commences. The point of Byron’s journey was of course to study Islamic architecture – and marvel at it he does, remarking on mosques “their richness is three-dimensional; it is attended by all the effort of shadow: in the mosque of Sheikh Lutfullah, it is a richness of light and surface, of pattern and colour only. The architectural form is unimportant. It is not smothered, as in rococo; it is simply the instrument of a spectacle, as earth is the instrument of a garden.”

Amazingly, Byron is consistently unperturbed by the inclement dangers and perils of their trip – Christopher on the other hand is much more cautious. For instance, in Persia, when Byron insults the shah out loud, Christopher diplomatically suggests they begin to refer to him privately as “Mr Smith” but eventually agree that “Marjoribanks” is much more suitable! Rebuking danger, Byron also disguised himself by blackening his face with charcoal so he could enter a forbidden mosque, and persisted on taking the nail bitingly treacherous route from Herat to Mazar – i – Sharif (as dangerous then as it is nowadays being Taliban and Al Qaeda territory!), the first Englishman to do so.

Unfortunately, Byron did not make is beyond Afghanistan, ending up in Kabul after all sorts of escapades and near death experiences. Of course, after all this eastern excitement, returning to England seemed rather drab and uninspiring, and Byron did indeed keep traveling and getting into trouble, and thankfully, writing about it. Ultimately, this is the quintessential travel tome. No Lonely Planet or In Patagonia or Short Walk in the Hindu Kush can come close...Why? because this was so, so far ahead of its time and is a journey to a regional that was dangerous then, but much more so now – basically inaccessible due to civil war, terrorism and foreign occupation. Sadly ,much of the splendour Byron saw in these countries - the formidable tribes, the exquisite architecture, the rich history, culture and customs....no longer even exists. Without ever knowing it, he managed to capture a lost time, a lost place, a lost people.

“What I have seen she taught me to see,” he writes, “and will tell me if I have honoured it.” For all you fellow wanderers, nomads and restless souls, this book is one to make sure you have space for in the over head luggage compartment!
Profile Image for Quo.
300 reviews
August 3, 2021
Almost 90 years ago, Robert Byron, a distant relative of the much better known British literary figure with the same surname, being a recent graduate of the Univ. of Oxford & having little or nothing in his life to occupy his attention, decides to head off in the direction of Afghanistan, then as now a rather fractious & unpredictable landscape for travelers. Byron proceeds via Jerusalem & the Middle East, transiting Baghdad & Tehran with a traveling companion named Christopher, devising a shifting mix of conveyances, including donkeys, carts, horses, camels, buses, cars of varying utility & an occasional train.



Byron was from privileged circumstances that had been largely diminished by the time he left Oxford with less than a first class degree & his travels were occasionally spartan in nature but he never ceased to part company with his copies of Boswell, Proust & Thucydides, retaining his upper-crust British airs, while not making much of an attempt to delve into local customs or the language of the area he traversed.

In fact, to read The Road to Oxiana is to be reintroduced to British snobbery, intolerance & incivility of a time & place when Great Britain ruled its vast empire without much thought to it ever being dismantled. Byron seems dismissive not just of Jews but of Turks, Persians, Syrians & even fellow British travelers, many of whom he mocks in a most unflattering manner.
A man looking like a decayed railway porter--as most Persians do under the present sumptuary laws--joined us at the mosque. We dined with a man named Hannibal, who is descended, like Pushkin, from the Peter the Great's negro and is certainly cousin to certain British royalties. Also present was a Jewish revisionist leader, part of an extreme party that wants England to set up a Jewish state. I don't know how long they think the Arabs would suffer a single Jew to exist once the English went.
Robert Byron displays a keen enthusiasm for architecture but even in appraising a structure that pleases him, he often suggests that...
Certainly, this is façade-architecture: the prototype of the Taj & a hundred other shrines. It breathes power & content, while its offspring achieve only scenic refinement. It has the audacity of true invention; the graces are sacrificed to the idea & the result, imperfect as it may be, represents the triumph of the idea over technical limitations. Much great architecture is of this kind.
The author is particularly fascinated by Persian wind towers but most buildings are described as "perfunctory" or of a "confused style". However, Byron can also be uplifted by what he sees, as with the Tomb of Tamerlane at Samarkand, first seen at dusk, causing the author to go to bed "like a child on Christmas Eve, scarcely able to wait till morning...
when 7 sky-blue pillars are revealed, rising out of bare fields against heather-coated mountains, with each enshrouded in a highlight of pure gold at dawn, with every tile, every flower, every petal of the mosaic contributing its genius to the whole. Even in ruin, such architecture speaks of a golden age. Has history already forgotten it?
Meanwhile, the language is often vernacular or oddly colloquial but then quickly drifts to a far more formal style especially when detailing architecture. Still, his descriptions are seldom anything except caustic, as with those in a bazaar who he views as "hawk-eyed & eagle-beaked, with the swarthy, loose-knit men swinging through the dark bazaar with a devil-may-care attitude, carrying rifles while shopping as Londoners carry umbrellas".



To be sure, travel to this part of the world prior to cell phones, ATM cards, soft-sided luggage on wheels & other conveniences was seldom a joy, no matter the crumbling monuments to be revealed along the way, as when "mosquitoes the size of eagles swarm overhead and diarrhea turned to dysentery, forcing us to retreat to Meshed & safety." At this point, Byron comments that he "was never so glad to see its domes & the fascinating congeries of mosques, mausoleums, bazaars & labyrinths, an intricate but unbeautiful mosaic."



The preface to The Road to Oxiana by Rory Stewart & the introduction by Paul Fussell are both excellent and shine a helpfully revealing light on the background of Robert Byron. Stewart tells the reader that Byron's approach to travel writing includes "irreverence, slanderous innuendo, ludicrous analogies, showy erudition, neurosis, snobbery, aesthetic obsessions & infuriating charm which might seem more appropriate for a Mayfair ball." That quite aptly captures it! Stewart goes on to say that at his best Byron's outlook is less like Evelyn Waugh & more like his Eton contemporary, George Orwell.



Fussell meanwhile comments that Robert Byron seemed incapable of a "continuous, seemless narration", even though he worked on the manuscript for 3 years. Instead, we have a "most heterogeneous rhetorical mix, like elements of a collage", including newspaper clippings, public signs,official forms, letters, diary entries, essays on current politics, lyrical passages, updates on delays & near disasters + "archeological dissertations" and what Fussell feels is the great strength of the book, the comic dialogues, complete with stage directions & even musical scoring, all almost like discovering "a museum piece presided over by a benign if very eccentric curator."

Here is just one sample from a camp within Afghanistan:
"Where is your kibitka", they asked. "My what?" "Your kibitka?" "I don't understand." With expressions of contempt & irritation, they pointed to their own felt & wattle huts: "Your kibitka--you must have a kibitka. Where is it?" "In Inglistan." "Where is that?" "In Hindostan." "Is that in Russia?" "Yes."
To be fair, I enjoyed much of Robert Byron's rather chaotic travel book but often, it seemed that rather than attempting to draw the reader in, he endeavored instead to keep the reader at a distance from the experiences he was in the process of relating. It was a pleasant experience to be taken by the author to Yadz, Isfahan & Persepolis in Iran (places I have visited), as well as outposts in Afghanistan such as Bamiyan, with its now destroyed huge, inset Buddhas, locations that I will only come to know through books like The Road to Oxiana.



Sadly, Robert Byron, who also had a gift for sketching scenes & people he encountered, perished at age 36 when his ship was struck by a German torpedo in 1941, while en route to a posting in North Africa. *Among my photo images are two of the author, Robert Byron, + images of people & sites, including Bamiyan in Afghanistan, which he was able to explore while in quest of the river Oxus or Oxiana, a dividing point between Afghanistan & the former USSR.
Profile Image for W.
1,185 reviews4 followers
September 28, 2020
I'm always on the lookout for a good travel book and this is supposed to be a travel classic written in the 1930s. It is an account of the author's travels from the Middle East to Central Asia.

Well,it has made me wary of the very term "travel classic". It didn't help that I especially ordered it online and had it airlifted all the way from Karachi. That made it hard to throw in the trash can.

It is the diary of an Englishman from colonial times,so it has the colonial mindset,and casual racism. That in itself is off-putting enough.

But what makes it worse are those detailed,over elaborate descriptions of the architecture of the places visited by him. The prose is needlessly flowery. I prefer my travel writing to be more straightforward.
Made me yawn and want to toss the book aside.

Not recommended,even if one reviewer describes it as "the greatest travel book ever written" !
Profile Image for Amanda Brookfield.
Author 26 books88 followers
June 20, 2015
I had never heard of Robert Byron (distantly related to Lord Byron, but that's by-the-by), nor am I a natural fan of 'travel' writing, preferring my reading matter to be fictional. Nor had I a clue where or what Oxiana is. (It is an area around the River Oxus, the ancient name for the river Amu Darya, which snakes down from southern Russia into northern eastern Afghanistan). So I think it is fair to say that I approached this book with some caution, finding the very last copy of it in a bookshop fortuitously soon after someone - whose opinion I value greatly - had mentioned it as being one of those Must-Read Unmissable gems of the twentieth century.

Byron was a journalist, delightfully eccentric and with a passion and knowledge of ancient architecture. The book is written as a journal, describing a trip he made in 1933 through the Middle East via Beirut, Jerusalem, Baghdad and Teheran to Oxiana, on a quest to see the legendary eleventh century tower of Qabus, (or Kabus). The quest is achieved. The tower, depicted in my copy in a photo as a menacing but plain cone-topped construct of pillared bricks, is brought to life by Byron's extraordinary knowledge and powers of description, as is everything else that crosses his path, from local people, to breathtaking landscapes, as well as the countless other ancient and often abandoned monuments that he seeks out.

Byron is also very funny, particularly about the endless set-backs he encounters on his travels - no vehicle lasts more than a few days, the weather is regularly catastrophic, disguises are required, food is often scarce, and never does any single day go according to its original plan. Within that humour however, is a marked humility and respect for all that he encounters. And this to me, quite apart from the power of his prose to transport the reader into every place he visits, is key to the mastery of the book. For Robert Byron is a traveller in the truest, greatest sense: that is, he does not, ever, attempt to impose himself on the terrain and cultures he is exploring; he simply observes every detail with awe and gratitude and intelligence, managing in this great book to allow the reader to share that privilege with him.

Reading 'The Road to Oxiana' made me sad too. For even though Robert Byron wasn't always greeted with open arms, so much of the area he explored has now become synonymous with suffering and conflict on a vast scale, its innumerable wondrous antiquities destroyed or rendered utterly beyond access. What the book depicts therefore is literally, a lost world; a fact which made me all the more grateful to the genius and courage of the man for deciding to explore and document it. Sadder still, Robert Byron died just 8 years later, in 1941, thanks to a torpedo sinking the ship on which he was travelling as a journalist in the Second World War. He was thirty six. It is impossible not to lament the unwritten journeys and spellbinding prose that sank with him.

I know 'spellbinding' is a powerful adjective. So here is an example of why I have deployed it:

"Suddenly, as a ship leaves an estuary, we came out onto the steppe: a dazzling open sea of green. I never saw the colour before. In other greens, of emerald, jade, or malachite, the harsh deep green of the Bengal jungle, the salad green of Mediterranean vineyards, the heavy full-blown green of English summer beeches, some element of blue or yellow predominates over the others. This was the pure essence of green, indissoluble, the colour of life itself."

See what I mean? 'Spellbinding' is the only word.
Profile Image for Jim Coughenour.
Author 4 books193 followers
July 23, 2010
It only took me a few days to read this book about Robert Byron's 1934 journey through Persia and Afghanistan, but those few days were spread across six years. Byron's artfully artless "entries" ramble from exquisite lyricism to passages of undiluted boredom – although now, at the end, I've succumbed to its enchantment. Rory Stewart, in his Preface (which like all prefaces and introductions is best enjoyed after reading the book) observes that Byron more or less invented travel writing. "In Byron, literature about the Orient is no longer tragedy; it is burlesque."

Byron opens his book in Venice with a splash of brilliant, brittle repartee (quoted in another review here) – the kind of comedy you'd expect from Sebastian Flyte if he'd ever left Brideshead. But Byron isn't the feckless, upper-class Oxonian he appears; he was "small, round, unathletic, and homosexual," a cash-starved, self-taught authority on Byzantine and Islamic art. (His appreciative descriptions of medieval Islamic architecture kindled my own curiosity – inducing me to order Robert Irwin's Islamic Art in Context.)

I had a shocked laugh, though, when I read his description of giant Buddhas of Bamyan, dynamited by the Taliban in 2001:

Neither has any artistic value. But one could bear that; it is their negation of sense, the lack of any pride in their monstrous flaccid bulk, that sickens. Even their material is unbeautiful, for the cliff is made, not of stone but of compressed gravel. A lot of monastic navvies were given picks and told to copy some frightful semi-Hellenistic image from India or China. The result has not even the dignity of labour.

This is typical of Byron's best – independent, impolitic, disgusted with cant in all its guises. The Road to Oxonia is more than a travel classic, it's a witness to an Afghanistan that's largely disappeared – thanks to the Soviets, the warlords and the Taliban, and our own embittered intervention.

Profile Image for Boyd.
91 reviews45 followers
July 15, 2012
There are many engaging European travel narratives of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but this is one of the very best--better than Lawrence or Thesiger; possibly one of the greatest ever.

In 1933, Robert Byron--an English writer, art critic, and gentleman adventurer--joined up with his friend Christopher Sykes and embarked on a journey of nearly a year that took him from Italy through Cyprus and Jerusalem, thence across Persia and Afghanistan, and at last to the tiny country of Oxiana in the Afghan borderlands. Along the way he encounters an assortment of peculiar characters, whose quirks he captures in a score of "retrieved" conversations so hilarious that Samuel Beckett would have been proud of himself if he'd written them.

Byron en route suffers a host of deprivations but also regularly encounters fabulous works of art and (particularly) architecture, and in his descriptions of these his awe is palpable. He can conjure an image of such understated beauty, natural or man-made,that it sets you back on your heels and makes you feel as if you're suddenly reading something entirely different. The book is a concatenation of odd elements that somehow works perfectly.

Byron died at the rather unripe age of 36 when a ship he was traveling on was torpedoed by the Germans during World War II. Hard not to wonder what so gifted a writer would have produced had he not been carried off so early.
Profile Image for ALLEN.
553 reviews135 followers
September 7, 2018
This is Central Asia with a vengeance. In 1933 Robert Byron made the trek into Central Asia by way of the Middle East; specifically, the Soviet Union by way of Afghanistan. The author's point-of-view is frequently called "eccentric," but it is also very observant. And Byron writes grippingly about a part of the world that still isn't that easy to explore. If you like travel tales, this is quite a good one.
Profile Image for Shannon.
762 reviews1 follower
March 3, 2010
The things we are forced to do for book club. This classic travel memoir is the diary-style memoir of an Englishman crossing Persia and Afghanistan in 1933. He is witty and likable, also random, pompous and casually racist in that impossibly pre-WWII way. His observations are keen and his writing witty - I even laughed out loud twice. But every part the world he captures seems ancient history. The buildings no longer stand, the countries are disappeared, the cities and ethnicities changed names a hundred times. The writing is wonderfully descriptive, yet I never had the slightest idea what he was on about. Most of the book reads as a diary meant for himself - casual half-references to characters with no explanation whatsoever. I kept picking the book up, but the entire time felt a temper tantrum simmering just below the surface. Bored, anxious and with that bratty feeling that this had better be over soon, I would not recommend this book. Mark Twain is all the classic I could ever want.
Profile Image for Jim O'Donnell.
61 reviews7 followers
September 13, 2011
A combination of the lyric, the dissertation and the comic, this is one of the most beautiful books every written. Chatwin called it “beyond criticism”. I agree. This is a book that allows you to taste the tea, smell the leaves and the dust and feel the cool air of the oasis… AND to experience a by-gone world lost in the wars of the past thirty years.

For nearly a year (1933-34), young Robert Byron traveled from Venice to Cyprus to Syria Iraq, Iran and into Afganistan. He ended his journey at the Qabus Tower in Peshwar - a place he affixed with the name Oxiana, the country of the Oxus, ancient name of the Amu Darya. He and his travel companion Christopher Sykes were architecture-bound, exploring many of the great structures that are now listed as World Heritage sites. Byron at once comes off as one of the pretentious pricks Waugh seemed to adore, a touchingly empathetic observer, a master of architecture and hater of the typical tourist (the railing against both Venice and the Taj Majal are quite fun). It is not until he reaches Iran that we start to see Byron at his most joyful, taking us from mosque to mosque and describing them in rich and lyrical detail.

If Byron had not been lost in a U-Boat attack during World War II, one wonders what other great books he would have produced.

www.aroundtheworldineightyyears.com
Profile Image for Czarny Pies.
2,600 reviews1 follower
March 17, 2023
“The Road to Oxiana” appears in 40th place on the Guardian’s list of the greatest non-fiction books of all time as of 31 December 2017 and is described as a “dazzling, timeless account of a journey to Afghanistan … perhaps the greatest travel book of the 20th century.” In fact, the book is plodding, verbose and now badly dated.
A great number of people better qualified than me to judge however like the book. Travel writers such as Patrick Fermor and Bruce Chatwin both argue that it was an important pioneering work that provided an excellent model that others followed. Evelyn Waugh and Nancy Mitford also had high praise for it.
Let us look at its good points. “The Road to Oxiana” chronicles a journey that Byron began on August 20, 1933, in Venice and concluded on June 19 in Peshawar now currently in Pakistan. Byron’s objective was to visit mosques, tombs, palaces, and other sites with significant objects of Islamic art.
Byron did not view these things as an expert in Islamic art but as a connoisseur of art in the broadest sense. He explained: “You can judge these doors (which are on a Sultan tomb) and Renascence doors and Corbusier’s doors all by the same standard.” (p. 159) In other words, Byron’s project was to stimulate interest in Islamic art among cultured Europeans. The photographs that he took are much better than his text and constitute the best part of the book.
Byron however does have a very interesting thesis. In his view, the citations from the Koran presented in Kufic script provide the beauty of Islamic art. He writes on Mahmud’s tomb in Kabul: “The virtue of the Tomb as a work of art lies in the depth and fulness of the carving, in the glow of the marble where age has caressed it and above all in the main inscription. Kufic lettering has a functional beauty, regarded as pure design, its extraordinary emphasis seems in itself a form of oratory, transposition of speech from the audible to the visible. I have enjoyed many examples of it in the last ten months. But none can compare with these tall rhythmic ciphers involved with dancing foliage, which mourns the loss of Mahmud, the conqueror of India, Persia and Oxiana, nine centuries after his death, the capital where he ruled.” (p. 265)
I wish that Byron could have written longer on this argument. The fact is that most Western observers make no effort however to appreciate Islamic calligraphy and often assert that it simply adds clutter to the works. We can see the beauty in a portrait of the Virgin Mary but have no patience for Koranic verses written in flowery letters.
A major problem for the reader of the 21st century is that Byron constantly denigrates Arabs, Turks, Persians and Afghanis in a manner that is no longer acceptable. On page 51, he writes: “the Afghan ambassador looks like a tiger dressed up as a Jew”. He feels that the peoples of the region need the Western powers to manage their affairs because they are incompetent to do so. He states: “If the Afghans can’t keep their own house in order the Russians will be likely to do it for them on the north, just as we do in the south.” (p. 242)
In Byron’s opinion the political leaders of the region were concerned only about appearances and ruled their nations incompetently: “Poor Asia! Everything boils down to the inevitable nationalism, the desire for self-sufficiency, the wish to cut a figure in the world and no longer be called interesting for lack of plumbing. … Mohammed Gul’s personal schemes reveal him to be an extreme nationalist who cares more for symbols than utility, to be Afghan’s de Valera who would even go so far as to change the official language from Persian to Pashtu.” (p. 242)
I also have little sympathy for Byron’s outrage of being suspected of being a spy. In the 1930s there were essentially no tourists in the region and many of the foreign visitors were in fact spies. Those performing espionage invariably tried to pass themselves as ethnographers or archeologists.
“The Road to Oxiana” is a dull read that disappointed me greatly. It reflects a mentality that existed in the in the British Century in the middle of the 20th century but has nothing of substance to say about the world that we live in today.
Profile Image for Dana Stabenow.
Author 82 books2,003 followers
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January 30, 2022
I think this book would be better read on the ground he covers. The amount of detail about the towns (living and dead) and buildings and monuments he visits is overwhelming when you're reading it with your feet up at home, but it would very likely be amazing if you were standing in front of what's he's describing: "At Hamadan we eschewed the tombs of Esther and Avicennna, but visited the Gumbad-i-Alaviyan, a Seljuk mausoleum of the twelfth century, whose uncoloured stucco panels, puffed and punctured into a riot of vegetable exuberance, are yet as formal and rich as Versailles--perhaps richer considering their economy of means; for when splendour is got by a chisel and a lump of plaster instead of the wealth of the world, it is splendour of design alone." (p.51)

I know now that the two major features the Muslims contributed to the world of architecture were the dome and the arcade. He also spends a great deal of time looking at towers with caps that make them look like penises, which gets a little tedious.

There are sit-up-with-a-jerk historical echoes in the present day, too: "In 1885 the military came to the rescue after all. Russian troops were massing on the north-west frontier of Afghanistan, and the Government of India could not stop them because neither it nor the Afghans knew where the frontier was."(p 92)

There is also great writing: "No Persian would venture to entertain a single guest, much less give a party, without carpets. When dancing began, the floor rose like an angry sea, and no until several couples had been wrecked were nails employed to quiet the woolen breakers."(p 173)

There is a new preface by Rory Stewart, who wrote The Places in Between and was responsible for bringing this book back into print, and an introduction by the fabulous Paul Fussell.
Profile Image for Bob.
854 reviews71 followers
May 13, 2007
The 1930s, from this distance at least, feels like the last time you could go somewhere in the world and it would be really different, plus there was still an aristocratic class with the money and free time to meander around the world with all the positive and negative results of amateur exploration. The actual writing of the book is odd and varied and quite modernist - Paul Fussell (who I will be adding to my booklist before long) says The Road to Oxiana is to travel writing what Ulysses is to the novel and The Wasteland is to poetry - a pretty heady claim! Byron was specifically in pursuit of certain kinds of Islamic architecture and art that were relatively underrated at the time by the European academic world (have a look at all the photos on this page - http://depts.washington.edu/silkroad/... - to get an idea of what he was after. Funny and casually erudite.
Profile Image for Josh Friedlander.
751 reviews111 followers
February 23, 2016
"The shorn and parcelled Oxus strains along
Through beds of sand and matted rushy isles —
Oxus, forgetting the bright speed he had
In his high mountain-cradle in Pamere,
A foiled circuitous wanderer"
Matthew Arnold

The Amu Darya river is known to Persians as Jehun, cognate of the Hebrew גיחון, one of the four primal rivers flowing from Eden mentioned in Genesis 2:12. But its ancient name is Oxus, whence comes the title of this book. It is also known to various cultures as Vaksha and Wehrod. This confluence of civilisations well reflects the rich diversity of the regions in which this book takes place - Persian, Greek, Turkic, Indian, Chinese.

This travelogue, specifically, does not welcome the lazy reader. Byron was well-educated - he had studied at the Oriental Institute after dropping out of Oxford, and spoke some Persian. He jumps straight into things, assuming the reader is familiar with the broad outlines of Central Asian history and architecture, and filling in the finer details. His aesthetic judgement is informed and unafraid.
After being stood up by some friends testing a coal-driven car, and intermittently accompanied by friend Christopher Sykes, Byron makes his way from Venice to Palestine, via Cyprus, and then heads through Syria and Iraq to (then) Persia, finally heading east to Afghanistan. His goal is to reach the Oxus river - southern border of Transoxiana, the boundary of Russia's sphere of influence - but he is not allowed to reach it. The reason stated by the various officials getting in his way is that he and Christopher are suspected of being spies, but at the end, Byron discovers the truth. The Russians and the English have arranged that neither country's citizens are allowed in the other's sphere of influence (no-one had exactly conquered Afghanistan or India, but the Great Game for control of Central Asia, the 'heartland' of Eurasia, was in full swing). Byron disparages this agreement together with a Russian he runs into.

By googling a lot, I picked up plenty of history from this book. (Byron's antiquated spelling frequently led to quotes from this book being the only search result.) The author's sneering condescension for his subaltern environments is anachronistic, but he also has real appreciation for the (natural and man-made) beauty he sees. His lengthy discussion of architectural features can sometimes be a little monotonous. Still, the adventurous spirit and timeless wonder conveyed through these pages is enough to inspire in the reader the urge to dust off one's passport and head out the door. Small wonder that many travel writers still consider it their bible.
Profile Image for Feliks.
496 reviews
September 21, 2018
Not quite as spry or lively as the glowing cover summary/blurbs might lead one to believe. There's truly an ankle-depth of overly-minute detail one has to slog through. This, in favor over a decided lack of narrative impetus. If a gnat flits past this guy's eyebrow, he will mention it. Often hard to get a sense of where he actually is.

There's no continuity in the passages; nothing knits the episodes together. As a 'book' it is literally composed just of Byron's diary jottings as the journey wends its way along. He rarely seems to complete his thoughts. Seriously, this will be your impression for almost the first half of the book. Annoyance. What is the point of this trip across Afghanistan and Iran? It almost never emerges, until the book is over.

It delivers somewhat better on its promise around the halfway mark, however. There's some amusing anecdotes sprinkled in here-and-there: lorries breaking down; odd companions; extreme weather; unusual landscapes; malevolent mosquitoes. Niggling with natives; parlaying with pretentious potentates; and battles with burdensome bureaucracy.

Nonetheless, the writing style is so mealy, so reedy...groan. Ultimately, one can and does find some charm and wit; Byron is very frank and even salty. He's unafraid to heap derision whenever its needed. He calls things out for what they are.

But, boy --what a struggle to plod along with such inefficient scribbling. If there is any tangible benefit to the read overall it is that one does come away with a quick primer in ancient Persian architecture. Its a swift way to become familiar with the utmost 'basics' of a very difficult subject. One also gets a glimpse of 1930s Afghanistan. Pair this book with Joseph Kessel's fabulous, 'The Horsemen' and you will surely wind up knowing more about the Afghans than 99.95% of Americans.
Profile Image for Aatif Rashid.
Author 4 books16 followers
January 15, 2018
The greatest travel book ever written, following the journey of Robert Byron across the Middle East as he tries to reach the river Oxus, the old Greek name for the Amu Darya, on the northern border of Afghanistan. It's written in a wondrous prose style, jaunty, elegant, and moving with a pace that makes writers today sound turgid: "We went to the Lido this morning, and the Doge's Palace looked more beautiful from a speed-boat than it ever did from a gondola."

People always criticize by default any white male travel writer writing about the Middle East--but Byron keeps his account free from racial or religious prejudices and focuses instead on art and architecture. If anything, he's utterly enamored of old Islamic buildings, which he finds far superior to anything made in the England of his time:

“I have never encountered splendour of this kind before. Other interiors came into my mind as I stopped there, to compare it with: Versailles, or the porcelain rooms at Schonbrunn, or the Doge’s Palace, or St. Peter’s. All are rich; but none so rich. Their richness is three-dimensional; it is attended by all the effort of shadow. In the Mosque of Sheikh Luftullah, it is a richness of light and surface, of pattern and colour only. The architectural form is unimportant. It is not smothered, as in rococo; it is simply the instrument of a spectacle, as earth is the instrument of a garden. And then I suddenly thought of that unfortunate species, modern interior decorators, who imagine they can make a restaurant, or a cinema, or a plutocrat’s drawing-room look rich if given money enough for gold leaf and looking-glass. They little know what amateurs they are. Nor, alas, do their clients.”
Profile Image for Andrew.
2,077 reviews781 followers
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December 29, 2015
In the lead-up to World War II, a cynical Oxford hedonist departed for points east to write one of the 20th Century's greatest jaded-fuck travelogues. Obnoxious Brits and Yanks abroad, bad meals, rough roads, pompous local potentates, and shitty parties with legations of various European nations fill the book. But so do stunning mountain scenes, architectural and archaeological wonders, and random kindnesses. Long before people like Paul Theroux and Bruce Chatwin made their names on travel writing that oscillates between bitterness and transcendence, Robert Byron blazed the path. While he may not be as widely read, he's worth rediscovering.
Profile Image for else fine.
277 reviews183 followers
March 2, 2010
Snarky, underfunded, antisocial, linguistically limited, and with a keen dislike of both his own people and those of other nations, Byron trekked through Iran and Afghanistan in search of architectural treasures. The Road to Oxiana, composed in the form of a journal, veers between beautifully restrained descriptions of landscapes and ridiculous, self-deprecating slapstick. It's heavy on art theory and historical background but never for a moment feels either boring or stilted. A hugely fun, enormously informative read.
Profile Image for Triin.
52 reviews3 followers
June 8, 2021
I haven’t read a travel book since I was a kid. This one was a bit of an outside choice to start again. Published in 1937, „The Road to Oxiana“ is a travel diary of a British gentleman wandering through Persia, Afghanistan and Turkestan towards Oxiana. The gentleman is a huge fan of Islamic architecture and devotes a lot of bookspace to describing various grave towers, tomb houses, mosques, etc. The descriptions are somewhat long-winded, although evocative. What appealed to me more was the dry humour, worthy of Dickens in some places, and the sharp insights about the people, the leaders and the politics of the era.
A couple of samples:
The Governor had already telephoned to him, explaining my purpose and identity. His first act, therefore, was to telephone to the Governor enquiring my purpose and identity. [...]
To asperse a sunset in these days is a political indiscretion; and equally so, to praise it, if there happens to be a cement-factory in the foreground that ought to be praised instead. Somebody must trespass on the taboos of modern nationalism, in the interests of human reason. Business can’t. Diplomacy won’t. It has to be people like us.
Profile Image for Massimiliano.
306 reviews70 followers
March 11, 2023
Una grandiosa narrazione di viaggio, rovinata da alcuni commenti in cui si riconosce il colonialista un po’ razzista nascosto nell’animo dell’autore inglese.

Di buono rimangono le descrizioni molto accurate dei posti visitati e dei reperti archeologici ammirati; seguendo l’autore lungo questo viaggio compiuto nel 1933 infatti si viene a conoscenza di un’ampia parte di storia dell’Iran e più in generale di tutta l’Asia centrale.

Allo stesso modo si entra in confidenza con la gente di quei posti, però c’è sempre questo sottofondo un po’ di superiorità trasmesso dalle parole dell’autore che dà un po’ fastidio (ed è lo stesso che si trova in Chatwin).

Insomma, è un viaggio bellissimo, ma farlo con Byron come compagno di viaggio potrebbe essere infernale.
Profile Image for Mike.
1,166 reviews157 followers
March 27, 2024
I have made it to Afghanistan with Byron. His style of writing is very descriptive but there is a lot of extraneous material, clearly part of his sojourn but not of interest to me. I am putting this away for a bit. Probably pick it up later and see where he goes after Herat. 3 Stars for now.
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