Siberia | Colin Thubron | Granta Magazine

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Siberia

Colin Thubron

‘The faintly clownish name of Omsk raises light-hearted expectations.’

Essays & Memoir
The Online Edition
22nd December 1998
Essays & Memoir
The Online Edition
22nd December 1998

Colin Thubron

Colin Thubron is a writer and novelist, who has written primarily on Central Asia, Russia and China. His books include Among the Russians, Behind the  Wall, In Siberia and Shadow of the Silk Road. In 2010 he became President of the Royal Society of Literature.

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Essays & Memoir | Issue 138 padlock

Colin Thubron | Is Travel Writing Dead?

Colin Thubron

‘The death of travel – and of the travel book – has been predicted for almost a century.’

Essays & Memoir | The Online Edition padlock

Mistakes

Colin Thubron

‘In twenty or thirty years’ time, perhaps, a monument will be raised to the martyrs of Tiananmen Square, innocent harbingers of a more liberal age.’

Essays & Memoir | The Online Edition padlock

The Old Silk Route

Colin Thubron

‘If I had charted the most landlocked spot on earth, the arms of my compass would have intersected here, in China's far northwest.’

Essays & Memoir | The Online Edition padlock

A Family in Nanjing

Colin Thubron

‘The old people had prepared a banquet for me - an extravagant spread of cold meats and dumplings which we ate with the prestige television blaring, and nobody watching it.’

Essays & Memoir | The Online Edition padlock

Night In Vietnam

Colin Thubron

‘The tombstones glimmered in the grass. But he felt only relief. The dead, tonight, were more companionable than the living.’

Essays & Memoir | The Online Edition

Pourquoi avec son Père?

Jeet Thayil

‘To read Baudelaire, he said, is to gather up the world and bring it inside.’

Jeet Thayil on remembering Baudelaire in Paris and Cochin.

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