Search results for ""Author Freya Stark""

A detailed account of famed travel writer Freya Stark's journey through the Mediterranean. When Roman legions marched into Asia Minor in 200BC, their plan was to secure a buffer zone between the Mediterranean, which they virtually owned, and the area beyond, which they sought to isolate rather than control. Along the long frontier of the Euphrates in Turkey lay the easternmost limits of the Roman Empire - a region they called Augusta Euphrantentis. Their expanding involvement lasted eight centuries, draining their energies and culminating in the destruction of the bridge that, since the time of Alexander the Great, had linked China to the commerce of the Mediterranean. Tracing the path of this ancient river and highlighting her travels with the vibrant history of 800 years of Roman warfare and the history of this mighty river, Freya Stark ultimately reveals the futility of war, of arbitrary boundaries, and territorial conquest. Rome on the Euphrates, at once travelogue and history, is one of Stark's most magnificent and highly acclaimed works.

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'She has written the best travel books of her generation and her name will survive as an artist in prose.' - The Observer Written just after the Second World War, Perseus in the Wind (named after the constellation) is perhaps the most personal, and haunting, of all Freya Stark's writings. She muses on the seasons, the effect light has on a landscape at a particular time of day, the smell of the earth after rain, Muslim saints, Indian temples, war and old age. Each chapter is devoted to a particular theme: happiness (simple pleasures, like her father's passion for the view from his cabin in Canada); education (to be able to command happiness, recognise beauty, value death, increase enjoyment); beauty (incongruous, flighty and elusive - a description of the stars, the burst of flowers in a park); death (a childhood awareness of the finality of time, the meaningfulness of the end); memory (the jewelled quality of literature, pleasure, love, an echo or a scent when aged by the passage of time). For those who have loved her travel writing, Perseus in the Wind illuminates the motivations behind Freya Stark's journeys and the woman behind the traveller.

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INTRODUCED BY MONISHA RAJESH, award-winning author of Around the World in 80 Trains'If I were asked to enumerate the pleasures of travel, this would be one of the greatest among them - that so often and so unexpectedly you meet the best in human nature.' Growing up in near-poverty and denied a formal education, Freya Stark had nurtured a fascination for the Middle East since reading Arabian Nights as a child. But it wasn't until she was in her thirties that she was able to leave Europe. Boarding a cargo ship to Beirut in 1927, she went on to became one of her generation's most intrepid explorers - her adventures would take her to remote areas in Turkey, the Middle East and Asia. The Valleys of the Assassins chronicles Stark's treks into the wilderness of western Iran on the hunt for treasure and in an attempt to locate the long-fabled Assassins in Alumut, an ancient Persian sect. Entering Luristan on a mule, draped in native clothing, Freya bluffs her way past border guards and sets off into uncharted territory; places where few Europeans, and no European women, had ventured. Stark was a woman of indefatigable energy, who often travelled with only a single guide and on a shoestring budget, and who was undeterred by discomfort and danger. Hailed as a classic upon its first publication in 1934, The Valleys of the Assassins is an absorbing account of people and place. Full of wit and rich in detail - and also in humanity - her writing brings to vivid life the stories of the ancient kingdoms of the Middle East.

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