The Desert Road to Turkestan (Kodansha Globe) [Paperback]

Owen Lattimore (Author), David Lattimore (Introduction)

Book Description

Series: Kodansha Globe | Publication Date: August 15, 1995

In inner Mongolia in 1927, when travel by rail had all but eclipsed the traditional camel caravan, Owen Lattimore embarked on the journey that would establish him as a legendary adventurer and leader among Asian scholars. THE DESERT ROAD TO TURKESTAN is Lattimore's elegant and spirited account of his harrowing expedition across the famous "Winding Road."

Setting off to rejoin his wife for their honeymoon in Chinese Turkestan, Lattimore was forced to contend with marauding troops, a lack of maps, scheming travel companions, and blinding blizzard. Luckily he had with him not only his father's retainer, Moses, but a team of camel pullers and Chinese traders he had assembled to teach him the ropes about their mysterious and now extinct way of life.

Lattimore's gifts as a linguist and his remarkable powers of observation lend his chronicle an immediacy and force that has lost now of its impact in the decades since its original publication.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Originally published in 1929, Lattimore's account of traveling in a camel caravan through inner Mongolia sheds light on the lives and customs of ``camel pullers'' and Chinese traders.

Copyright 1995 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

OWEN LATTIMORE was one of the foremost China scholars of this century. In 1950 Senator Joseph McCarthy labeled him "one of the top Communist agents in the country." After years of Senate hearings and appeals, he was exonerated and left the United States to become Professor of Mongolian Studies at the University of Leeds. He died in 1989.

DAVID LATTIMORE is Professor of Chinese Studies at Brown University.

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Kodansha USA (August 15, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1568360703
• ISBN-13: 978-1568360706
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,450,603 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #63 in Books > History > Asia > Mongolia

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best accounts of travel in China ever written, August 23, 2000

By 

P. R. Neville-Hadley - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Desert Road to Turkestan (Kodansha Globe) (Paperback)

This is an account of a journey across the Gobi Desert by camel in the early part of the 20th century at a time when central government control was fragmentary at best--a time of warlords, bandits, and the rapid decline of a great number of traditional practices in China. The author, a fluent Chinese speaker, sometime journalist, and wool trader for a company in Tianjin, hired camels to join one of the last of the trading caravans travelling between Xinjiang an what is now Inner Mongolia. From observations of the manners and customs of the caravans, through details of language, to descriptions of the various hazards of the journey, Lattimore (an American who was later persecuted in the anti-Communist witch-hunts of the 60s for his knowledge of China) is both perceptive and witty, and his book is infused with a sympathy for the people and their soon-to-vanish way of life.

This charming, amusing, and intelligent book is one of the best travel books on China ever written, several leagues above most modern accounts, and is likely to remain in print for a long time to come.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What a great book!, February 3, 2004

By 

Amy Thomson "Amy Thomson" (Seattle, WA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Desert Road to Turkestan (Kodansha Globe) (Paperback)

I finished reading Owen Lattimore's The Desert Road to Turkestan yesterday, and rarely have I been so completely, thoroughly and delightedly sandbagged by a book. I spent all day in bed absorbed in Lattimore's travels with a Chinese camel caravan through Western China and the Gobi desert in 1926-7. This definitely qualifies as a first-rate example of the "Are You Out of Your Mind!" travel book genre. It's even better than The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. On top of that, Lattimore was one of the 20th centuries finest Asian Scholars. Buy, Read, Enjoy!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Before the end of caravan days, September 5, 2006

By 

Magalini Sabina "sabina" (Rome Italy) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Desert Road to Turkestan (Kodansha Globe) (Paperback)

Owen Lattimore, the successively famous Chinese and Mongolian scholar and much debated presumptive "comunist agent" of the McCartney period, wrote this book in 1927 after his incredible caravan voyage along the then unmapped "Winding Road" in Inner Mongolia of 1926. The reason for this ethnological feat was the Author's convinction that caravan days were going to disappear with the progress beeing made in China by railways and roads and as he puts it: "I wanted to feel the strange and actual life of the past which we usually accept without thought as the dead background of our present". The choice of the Winding Road instead of the more common and mapped Silk Road routes was determined by the then dangerous traveling conditions due to war going on in China. Lattimore's intention must be kept in mind while reading this exquisite work. Many of the apparent drawbacks of the book such as the excessive detail in the use of foreign toponyms, the frequent digressions into prices of wares, habits of people, legends and stories related to places are in reality a treasure of knwoledge that has been preserved for ever. However, the "winding" of Lattimore's prose and thoughts does not hinder the enjoyability of this adventure, because the Desert Road is an adventure book of the best tradition. The adventure of a smart and curious and brave young man that is completely engrossed in his dream but at the same times does not recoil from living and learning from the men he travels with. The characters such as Moses, the Villainous Camel Puller and Wa-wa, the Eldest Son of the House of Chou are etched with great care and deep understanding and even if there are no "strong episodes", the interactions among them is interesting to follow and works like the backbone of the story. But the real magic of the book is the description of the days, the atmospheres and the landscapes, the animals (camels and others), the physical excertion and the the inconveniences and the moments of joy and peace.The Black Gobi is looming in the back of the whole story with its camel skeletons and buried water wells. The book also offers many photographs shot by the Author that illustrate significant episodes and people.
I think this book is an indispensable read in the approach to Inner Mongolia and its traditions and represents at the same time a specialistic and a non-specilistic historical document that will not be forgotten like many other travel books of those times.

P.S. If one is curious on the House of the False Lama (see the more recent George Crane's Beyond the House of the False Lama) in the DRTT you can find many answers.
The introduction by the Author's son David Lattimore helps to contextualize the book and gives many useful information for cross-references.