Land Beyond the River: The Untold Story of Central Asia [Hardcover]

Monica Whitlock (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 2003

Along the banks of the river once called Oxus lie the heartlands of Central Asia: Uzbekistan and Tajikstan. Catapulted into the news by events in Afghanistan, just across the water, these strategically important, intriguing and beautiful countries remain almost completely unknown to the outside world.

In this book, Monica Whitlock goes far beyond the headlines. Using eyewitness accounts, unpublished letters and firsthand reporting, she enters into the lives of the Central Asians and reveals a dramatic and moving human story unfolding over three generations.

There is Muhammadjan, called 'Hindustani', a diligent seminary student in the holy city of Bukhara until the 1917 revolution tore up the old order. Exiled to Siberia as a shepherd and then conscripted into the Red Army, he survived to become the inspiration for a new generation of clerics. Henrika was one of tens of thousands of Poles who walked and rode through Central Asia on their way to a new life in Iran, where she lives to this day. Then there were the proud Pioneer children who grew up in the certainty that the Soviet Union would last forever, only to find themselves in a new world that they had never imagined. In Central Asia, the extraordinary is commonplace and there is not a family without a remarkable story to tell.

Land Beyond the River is both a chronicle of a century and a clear-eyed, authoritative view of contemporary events.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Whitlock, a reporter for the BBC World Service, aspires to write a people's history of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and northern Afghanistan from 1909 to the present. "There are no accounts in English of Central Asia during the Second World War" reads a terse entry in Whitlock's bibliography, suggesting a problem with this approach: people's histories are difficult to present when a region has little in the way of recorded history. Whitlock is forced to weave in an inordinate amount of textbook-level exposition between her firsthand refugee interviews and excerpts from the unpublished diaries of dissidents, resulting in a book bursting out of its own category. Whitlock's intermittent focus on her close relationship with the inhabitants of these remote mountain valleys tends to make her prose veer toward the romantic, as when she describes how Uzbeks conscripted to patrol the Afghan border in June 1997 "walked back swiftly into the hot, black night, thick with the song of crickets." In the hands of a more gifted writer, such an ambitious approach might have successfully blended the newsworthy and the mundane, but Whitlock's prose is too pedestrian. Her preference is clearly for the "unsentimental lives of survivors," and she escorts us through the diplomatic activities of the elites with apparent reluctance. Although this book is certainly of interest to those with a serious curiosity about the region, more casual readers might wait a few years until this untold story is better told. Illus., maps.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

For as much as it has been in the news recently, Central Asia remains a cultural and geographic mystery to most Westerners. This unbiased and original selection should begin to remedy our ignorance. The river is the Oxus or Jaihun; the land beyond is Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, former Soviet republics and ancient crossroads to the subcontinent. Less a travelogue than a guided history, Whitlock's narrative spans three generations, from 1909 to the present. Its foci are two men whose illustrative lives put faces on trying times: Muhammadjan Rustomov, or "Hindustani," an Uzbek farmer's son and religious scholar, and Sadr-e Zia, a relatively cosmopolitan intellectual and, according to the author, one of the few men of his time who understood the Russian Revolution's effect on his homeland as it was happening. Contrast between the two men reiterates geographic and political differences between mountainous Tajikistan and barren yet populous Uzbekistan; both prove distinct from and yet terminally entwined with their chaotic southern neighbor. A must for anyone wishing to understand Afghanistan today, this selection will also interest Russian history buffs. Brendan Driscoll
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books; 1st edition (October 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 031227727X
• ISBN-13: 978-0312277277
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,261,633 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Land Beyond the River - Monica Whitlock, November 14, 2004

By 

K. Dahlstrom (London, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Land Beyond the River: The Untold Story of Central Asia (Hardcover)

This modern history of Central Asia is a primer for those who's knowledge of the region is scarce. BBC Central Asia correspondent Whitlock prepares the reader for the unfolding and unravelling of soviet central asia with the highlights of the regions 20th century history. Using the letters and verbal reminiscences of local people, from ordinary workers, to mullahs, to local and national leaders, she guides us effortlessly from the early parts of the 20th century through the collapse of the soviet state in 1989 and prepares the reader for the events which follow. Monica Whitlock uses archive material and local resources to conjer a descriptive narrative of the region which won't be bettered for years to come

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating keyhole through which to view hitherto virtually unknown lives..., August 3, 2006

By 

Jazz It Up Baby - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Land Beyond the River: The Untold Story of Central Asia (Hardcover)

Land Beyond the River provides one of the most vivid pictures available of the complex relationship between religion and society in Central Asia. Whitlock, as Martha Olcott of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said, a BBC journalist who lived in Tashkent, which she used as a base to report on the region, offers a highly personalized history of Central Asia. Her vehicle is exploring the lives of two "witnesses" whose lives stretched through the decades of Soviet rule: Muhammadjan Hindustani, a cleric from Kokand who lived out his life in Dushanbe, and Sadr-e Zia, an intellectual from Bukhara. She uses their own words, the memories of their families, and accounts of more recent prominent figures whose activities were in some way touched by one or another of these men.

Whitlock is an excellent journalist who developed relationships of great trust with the people who turned over their family materials to her. In the case of Sadr-e Zia, a lot of the material Whitlock used was being edited for publication at the time her book went to press, but she is more vague about the written record that informs her discussion of Hindustani. This is not surprising, given that the Tajik cleric was forced to work and teach in semi-secrecy until nearly his very last days, in 1989 when Mikail Gorbachev's policies of glasnost' (openness) changed state attitudes toward religion.

Working in what must have been conditions of partial (or even near total) secrecy while living in Central Asia, Whitlock does not seem to have been given a full portrait of Hindustani, who actually played an even greater role in training many of today's clerics and setting the tone for current religious debates than Whitlock credits him. For this reason, the book is more a fascinating keyhole through which to view hitherto virtually unknown lives than a scholarly contribution.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Compelling story, October 8, 2005

By 

Ann Muir (Sacramento, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Land Beyond the River: The Untold Story of Central Asia (Hardcover)

This is a compelling story well told. Highly recommended for anyone wanting an inside view of current events in Central Asia