Colin Thubron

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Colin Gerald Dryden Thubron, CBE is a British travel writer and novelist. He was born in London on June 14, 1939 and educated at Eton College. Before becoming a writer, he worked for a short time in publishing and film-making. His first travel book, Mirror to Damascus, published in 1968 followed shortly afterwards by The Hills of Adonis: A Quest in Lebanon, a lyrical account of a journey through the country, pre civil-war.

Only later did he turn to fiction with his first novel, Emperor, in 1978. His novel, A Cruel Madness, won the 1985 PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award. Behind the Wall won both the 1988 Hawthornden Prize and the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award. In Siberia was shortlisted for the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award. He is a distant relative of the English writer John Dryden. His latest travel book is Shadow of the Silk Road (2006), an account of his 7,000-mile journey along the route of the Silk Road revisiting the locales of his previous books - The Silk Road and the Lost Heart of Asia.

His 2002 novel, To the Last City (2002) was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize, and was his first piece of work to link his travel writing with his fiction. It is about a group of people who set off to explore the ruins of the Inca city of Vilcabamba in Peru in what has been described as a "Heart of Darkness narrative" in a "Marquezian setting" ^[1].

In many ways, Thubron's work harks back to an earlier age of travel writing. He is one of the last of the "gentlemen-travellers" - Eton-educated, erudite and willing to immerse himself in the countries in question for a long period of time. “Modern travel writing has always been created with a certain amount of gimmickry,” he told The Times, “which surprises me because I don’t really understand why you have to do that. The world abroad seems sufficiently extraordinary and peculiar without my having to resort to all that.” ^[2]

He was appointed a CBE in the New Year's Honours December 2006 and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

[edit] Selected works

• Mirror to Damascus - Heinemann, 1967
• The Hills of Adonis: A Quest in Lebanon - Heinemann, 1968
• Jerusalem - Heinemann, 1969
• Journey into Cyprus - Heinemann, 1975
• The God in the Mountain - Heinemann, 1977
• Istanbul - Time Life, 1978
• The Venetians - Time-Life, 1980
• The Ancient Mariners - Time-Life, 1981
• The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden - Hamish Hamilton, 1982
• Among the Russians - Heinemann, 1983
• Behind the Wall: A Journey through China - Heinemann, 1987
• The Silk Road: Beyond the Celestial Kingdom - Simon & Schuster, 1989
• The Lost Heart of Asia - Heinemann, 1994
• In Siberia - Chatto & Windus, 1999
• Shadow of the Silk Road, 2006

[edit] Novels

• Emperor - Heinemann, 1978
• A Cruel Madness - Heinemann, 1984
• Falling - Heinemann, 1989
• Turning Back the Sun - Heinemann, 1991
• Distance - Heinemann, 1996
• To the Last City - Chatto & Windus, 2002

[edit] References

1. ^ Observer review: To the Last City by Colin Thubron | By genre | Guardian Unlimited Books
2. ^ World Hum | Travel | Colin Thubron and the “Shadow of the Silk Road”