On the Other Side: A Journey through Soviet Central Asia

Average Customer Rating: List Price: $12.95 Asia Trips Trips Price: $27.13 Subject To Change Without Notice Availability: N/A Manufacturer: Owl Books
Binding: Paperback Dewey Decimal Number: 915.8404854 EAN: 9780805021080 ISBN: 0805021086 Label: Owl Books Manufacturer: Owl Books Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 192 Publication Date: 1992-07-15 Publisher: Owl Books Studio: Owl Books
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Editorial Reviews:
Spotlight customer reviews: Customer Rating: Summary: Erudite but Self-indulgent Comment: Geoffrey Moorhouse is a well-known travel writer and you'd have to say he writes popular history very well too. So, when I saw his book on Central Asia, I thought it would be a welcome addition to my recent literary wanderings through that part of the world. Not really. While I readily concede that his writing is as good as ever and his architectural descriptions give almost photographic impressions of the buildings he depicts, I felt that this volume lacked depth. It reminded me of Salman Rashdie's essay on Nicaragua----well-written, but by a person who didn't know the area, who didn't speak Spanish. Just being a well-travelled, erudite fellow does not automatically qualify you to write this sort of book. Compared to books by Colin Thubron and others, ON THE OTHER SIDE tends to fall between the cracks. It is not a detailed history, nor an accurate cultural description, it doesn't even tell much about his trip, though he certainly expressed his annoyance over bad service in Soviet hotels (doesn't every Western writer decry the same thing ?). I might say it is "neither fish nor fowl". Moorhouse visited Central Asia during the last days of Soviet rule, in the depths of winter as well. Perestroika had already appeared, but the style of his travels and what he was shown (accent on the passive voice here), remained Soviet. This is an account of a foreigner in thrall to Intourist and the KGB, however lightly they had begun to press. But Moorhouse himself realized that he didn't have a book's worth of impressions and comments. That is why, no doubt, he filled the pages with long asides about Genghis Khan and Mongol history (the Mongols devastated the area in the 1200s) about Russia's Afghan war, his feelings about the Red Army, his experiences in Prague back in 1968, about the British agents who were imprisoned and eventually executed in Bukhara back in the 1840s, a long whimsical passage about what would eventually happen to all the Lenin statues littering Central Asia [this became a problem much sooner than he envisioned], Russian history and descriptions of Orthodox church ritual. In short, while well-written, when it comes to imparting information or even impressions of Central Asia, this book is extremely patchy. There is almost nothing which shows more than superficial knowledge of the area through which he travelled. You would have to call it self-indulgent in the extreme. More Reviews