News from Tartary: A Journey from Peking to Kashmir [Paperback]

Peter Fleming (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Northwestern Univ Pr; New edition edition (1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0810160714
• ISBN-13: 978-0810160712
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,032,161 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

62 of 62 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Half a book, April 21, 2001

By 

A. Scott Earle (Sun Valley,ID USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: News from Tartary: A Journey from Peking to Kashmir (Paperback)

Peter Fleming's "News from Tartary" is a classic travel book about trekking through the wilds of Asia. Unfortunately, it has been badly served by this edition; it's overpriced and lacking in quality. It doesn't have the 26 illustrations of the original; it doesn't even have the absolutely necessary map. Reading it is like watching a great movie without sound or captions. Fleming (Ian Fleming's brother, as it happens)would have had a well-turned phrase of damnation had he seen how this edition emasculates the original. I urge you to read the book, but not this way. Go online and buy a used copy of the hardback for not much more (over 50 copies were listed when I checked abebooks.com)and enjoy Fleming's travel saga as it deserves to be enjoyed. I feel cheated; readers should be informed when a reprint edition is, like this one, incomplete. My one star rating is not for the writing--its for this shoddy presentation of a great travel book.

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Professionally amateur, August 23, 2000

By 

P. R. Neville-Hadley - See all my reviews
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This review is from: News from Tartary: A Journey from Peking to Kashmir (Paperback)

This is probably the best travel narrative ever written about China (although Owen Lattimore's 'The Desert Road to Turkestan' is a close second) and has influenced a great deal of subsequent writing about the region--not in content, but in style. Fleming presents himself as a bumbling amateur traveller, a mild eccentric, and someone who has only the vaguest idea what's going on. Later writers, attracted no doubt by the fact that this book has stayed in print for nearly 70 years, have taken this as justification to write narratives which revel in their own ignorance. But Fleming's amateurishness is merely a pose, and the book is full of humorous detail on life in China at that time, backed by sound journalism and knowledge of the political situation. It's also full of perceptive observations on the people he meets and their behaviour, guaranteed to bring a smile to the face of the modern traveller when coming across their latter day counterparts, both Chinese and expatriate foreigner.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Classic of Travel Writing, June 6, 2000

By 

J. Blilie "Naturalist-Skeptic" (Twin Cities, MN) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: News from Tartary: A Journey from Peking to Kashmir (Paperback)

I haven't bought this edition yet. I read this while in Nepal and India and loved it. It is one of the finest pieces of travel writing I know of. I rank it with Harrer's "Seven Years in Tibet", Newby's "A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, Thesiger's "Arabian Sands" and Stark's "Valleys of the Assassins." No new-age, PC navel-gazing here: just an honest and humorously-told narrative of an adventurous overland crossing of central Asia in a turbulent time. If you are interested in central Asia, I think this book is a must.