Days and Nights on the Grand Trunk Road [Hardcover]

Anthony Weller (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1997

Novelist and travel writer Anthony Weller takes readers on a 1,500-mile journey along an ancient trading road through India and Pakistan

For more than 30 centuries, travelers have walked, ridden, prayed, fought, and died along the Grand Trunk. Its 1,500 miles straddle the vast cultures, landscapes, and politics of India and Pakistan, from Calcutta all the way to the Khyber Pass.

Anthony Weller's remarkable book traces the story of this ancient route from its origins as a path through woods, fields, and jungles to the horsecart road immortalized in Rudyard Kipling's Kim. He captures the road's Just, heat, villages, and temples as well as tales of its wayfarers, from Buddha in his moment of enlightenment to the Sikhs in their present unrest. Great religions were born on it; empires and invaders have struggled to control it; and merchants have staked their lives on it. Today, it remains the economic lifeline of one-quarter of the world's people.

Weller gives us both the road's dramatic history and a modern portrait of the Asian subcontinent. He meets the people whose ancestors lived and died along the Grand Trunk as well as the truckers who rule today and brings alive the only man-made artery that still links India and Pakistan.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

On the 50th anniversary of the independence and partition of India, Weller, an American poet, novelist, and journalist (e.g., The Garden of the Peacocks, LJ 9/1/96) has written a richly anecdotal account of his journey along the subcontinent's most historic highway, the Grand Trunk Road, for centuries India's main artery, running from Calcutta to the Khyber Pass. The Grand Trunk has been the traditional route of invaders, as well as a conduit for new ideas and faiths. On a previous visit, Weller was stirred both by India's beauty and by his inability to comprehend the experience. So he returned and traveled the 1600-mile length of the Grand Trunk, hoping to make at least partial sense of his earlier impressions. Weller makes an excellent companion whether regaling us with the story of a Mogul emperor's elephant, describing the Jain faith, or speculating on the paucity of beggars in Pakistan. Recommended for academic and public libraries.?Robert Andrews, Duluth P.L., Minn.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

While the title is somewhat of a misnomer--since much of this ancient road cutting across India and Pakistan is too infested by bandits to travel after dark--make no mistake about the courage and intelligence behind this wryly observant travelogue. ``From what I'd witnessed, the future for most Indians looked like hell,'' writes novelist and travel writer Weller (The Garden of the Peacocks, 1996), and while this bleak prediction resonates throughout his account, one is equally impressed that India's explosive mixture of cultures and religions has not blown the lid off the world's largest democracy. Along this road, cut by conquerors from before Alexander, lie the birthplace of Buddhism, Jainism, and Hinduism, ornate but crumbling tombs--including the Taj Mahal (``that Moby Dick of architecture'')--as well as the sites of great pilgrimages and human slaughter. Traveling this frequently crumbling artery, his hired drivers dodging careening trucks, Weller alights in the sacred Hindu city of Benares astride the Ganges, whose ``stench is encyclopedic and hypnotic'' and into whose waters are commited some 40,000 cremated bodies yearly. Up the road, Kanpur is the site of the 1857 massacre of 1,000 British men, women, and children that led Queen Victoria to formally annex India. Weller traces the paths of Kipling, perhaps the only writer of the time to look beneficently on the Indians during the Raj. Tireless, aside from a bronchial disorder caused by the poisonous air of New Delhi, Weller proceeds to the Punjab, home to the Sikhs, and passes into Pakistan, which, while lacking the liberties and the cultural freedom of its neighbor, is generally cleaner, with far fewer beggars and homeless people. The last stage, up the forbidding Khyber Pass, in which dwell smugglers of all description, and through which he was required to hire an armed bodyguard, is perhaps the most exotic locale yet in an account brimming with beauty and strangeness. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 363 pages
• Publisher: Marlowe & Co; 1st edition (August 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 156924751X
• ISBN-13: 978-1569247518
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,258,125 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #48 in Books > Travel > Asia > Pakistan

More About the Author

ANTHONY WELLER was born in Georgia in 1957. He is the author of four novels--The Garden of the Peacocks, The Polish Lover, The Siege of Salt Cove and The Land of Later On--and a travel memoir of India and Pakistan, Days and Nights on the Grand Trunk Road. He also edited two collections of his father's Pulitzer Prize-winning World War II reporting, First into Nagasaki and Weller's War. For many years he was a highly-regarded jazz and classical guitarist.

Married, he lives in coastal Massachusetts and Italy.

Visit www.anthonyweller.com & www.writeweller.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars learning, May 5, 2001

By 

todd clancy (Ipswich ma) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Days and Nights on the Grand Trunk Road (Paperback)

A. Weller is a superb writer, I learned more about India in 10 pages than I could have in a year of school. Although the names, and dates can be eye crossing after awhile, it only showed me that mr. Weller did a ton of research, and cut no corners' in writing this book. From keen observations interspersed with humerous encounters with strangers' and beauracratic red tape, I applaud mr. Weller for writting a book the he could be proud of first, and not an "India for dummies". Rock on Tony!!

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Weller blends 3000 years of history with contemporary life., April 28, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Days and Nights on the Grand Trunk Road (Paperback)

Travelling along the GT Road is an expirience that one never forgets.The author gives an historical perspective of the points along the GT Road. He starts out in Calcutta, the city built by the Raj. Along the way he finds the foundations of the Jain and Buddhist religions. Weller writes about thses religions in an objective manner and gives a clear concise history of the religions along with their beliefs. Between these highlights he meets present day Indians. What he puts into words is what I thought but could not expess myself, both humorously and insightfully. I had lived in India for two years while serving in the Peace Corps. I felt the same frustrations he did in communicating and dealing with the bureaucracy.

This is an excellent book for one intending to travel through the subcontinent or has spent some time there.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great read about contemporary India, May 11, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Days and Nights on the Grand Trunk Road (Hardcover)

Reading this book was a great way to take a journey from home. Weller makes great observations about everyday encounters while en route through Northern India. From truck drivers to border guards to off the beaten track historic sites, Weller informs and entertains. I was suprised that the book educates as it entertains. Weller explains various history and religon in a manner that is never boring.