books in order

Colin Thubron Books In Order

Novels

  1. The God in the Mountain (1977)
  2. Emperor (1978)
  3. A Cruel Madness (1984)
  4. Falling (1989)
  5. Turning Back the Sun (1991)
  6. Distance (1996)
  7. To the Last City (2002)
  8. Night of Fire (2016)

Non fiction

  1. Mirror to Damascus (1967)
  2. The Hills of Adonis (1968)
  3. Jerusalem (1969)
  4. Journey into Cyprus (1975)
  5. Istanbul (1978)
  6. The Venetians (1980)
  7. The Ancient Mariners (1981)
  8. Among the Russians (1983)
  9. Fairies and Elves (1984)
  10. Where Nights Are Longest (1984)
  11. Behind the Wall (1987)
  12. The Silk Road (1989)
  13. The Lost Heart of Asia (1994)
  14. Samarkand (1996)
  15. In Siberia (1999)
  16. Shadow of the Silk Road (2006)
  17. To a Mountain in Tibet (2011)
  18. The Amur River (2021)

Novels Book Covers

Non fiction Book Covers

Colin Thubron Books Overview

Emperor

In AD 312 the Emperor Constantine crossed the Alps at the head of an army from the Rhineland, and marched south to take Rome. This novel is an imaginative reconstruction of the dramatic weeks leading up to his triumph. The author has also written ‘A Cruel Madness’, ‘Falling’ and ‘Behind the Wall’.

A Cruel Madness

When a part time worker in a mental hospital meets his old girlfriend inside he is not sure at first is she is a patient. Their reunion is haunted and haunting, and from the memory of their past affair there unfolds a labyrinth which darkens from romantic obsession to feelings deeper and more disturbing. Colin Thubron creates a world of passion, delusion, and reality mingling with unreality, the all enveloping sense of longing and of loss.

Falling

Isolated in the spotlight, a circus girl performs a trapeze act of strange daring. From the crowd below a journalist watches, betwitched. This novel explores the symbols we create for one another. Colin Thubron has written three novels and six travel books including ‘Among the Russians’.

Turning Back the Sun

When two bodies wash up on the river bank in a frontier town in Australia and the aborigines are blamed for the murder, racial hatred erupts, causing resentment among the aborigines and fear among the whites.National

Distance

In this thought provoking novel exploring the human mind and memory, Edward has lost his short term memory. He hopes it will return when he sees his cottage. He recognizes his overcoat on the hook, his books, the double bed. The mystery however is Naomi. Edward has no recollection of her or why she has left him a love letter.

Mirror to Damascus

This is a book describing the historical sights that await the traveller of Damascus. The author, Colin Thubron, has built up a following with his travel writing on places in the world least understood by people.

Jerusalem

This text describes the historical sights which await the traveller of Jerusalem, looking beneath the legend to discover the facts. It attempts to explain, without bias, the love of Christians, Jews and Muslims for the city, and aims to evoke the atmosphere of Jerusalem today.

Among the Russians

Here is a fresh perspective on the last tumultuous years of the Soviet Union and an exquisitely poetic travelogue. With a keen grasp of Russia’s history, a deep appreciation for its architecture and iconography, and an inexhaustible enthusiasm for its people and its culture, Colin Thubron is the perfect guide to a country most of us will never get to know firsthand. Here, we can walk down western Russia’s country roads, rest in its villages, and explore some of the most engaging cities in the world. Beautifully written and infinitely insightful, Among the Russians is vivid, compelling travel writing that will also appeal to readers of history and current events and to anyone captivated by the shape and texture of one of the world’s most enigmatic culture.

Fairies and Elves

Presents tales and examines beliefs about Fairies and Elves of the enchanted world.

Where Nights Are Longest

Where Nights Are Longest is Thubron’s account of his 10 thousand mile journey through the western half of Russia, its cities and its countryside. ‘A magnificent achievement.’ Nikolai Tolstoy.

Behind the Wall

Behind the Wall is a book as monumental as its subject: ‘the land of a billion uncomprehended people.’ Having learned Mandarin, and traveling alone by foot, bicycle and train, Colin Thubron set off on a 10,000 mile journey from Bejing to Tibet, from a tropical paradise near the Burmese border to the windswept wastes of the Gobi desert and the far end of the Great Wall. What he reveals is an astonishing diversity, a land whose still unmeasured resources strain to meet an awesome demand, and an ancient people still reeling from the devastation of the Cultural Revolution. ‘Colin Thubron is an uncannily intuitive, resilient and enterprising traveler. He has wonderful funds of sympathy to bestow, yet can be appropriately cold eyed. Altogether, he gives the impression of having the potential to become a legend within his own time.’ Edward Hoagland

The Lost Heart of Asia

A land of enormous proportions, countless secrets, and incredible history, Central Asia the heart of the great Mongol empire of Tamerlane, site of the legendary Silk Route and scene of Stalin’s cruelest deportations is a remote and fascinating region. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of newly independent republics, Central Asia containing the magical cities of Bukhara and Samarkand, and terrain as diverse as the Kazakh steppes, the Karakum desert, and the Pamir mountains has been in a constant state of transition. The Lost Heart of Asia takes readers into the very heart of this little visited, yet increasingly important region, delivering a rare and moving portrayal of a world in the midst of change.

In Siberia

An enormous and mysterious land, Siberia remains an exotic unknown that has haunted the imagination of Westerners for centuries. Colin Thubron takes us into the heart of Siberia on a journey of discovery from Mongolia to the Arctic Circle, from Rasputin’s village in the west through tundra, taiga, splendid mountains, lakes and rivers to the derelict Jewish community in Birobidzhan in the far eastern reaches of the region. More than a travel book, In Siberia is a moving and profound portrait of a region rich with history and the remains of an intriguing prehistorical past, religions, and a profusion of fascinating peoples and cultures. Traveling alone, by train, boat, car, and on foot, Thubron explores this vast territory, talking to anyone he can find about the state of the country today and what it is like to live there. He finds a land of spectacular natural beauty, marked by the horrors of the Gulag and Soviet exploitation of its abundant natural resources. Beneath the permafrost, all too near the surface, lie bones and nuclear waste. And yet in counterpoise to the horror is the extraordinary human compassion he encounters: Wherever he goes, somebody takes him in and feeds him, no matter how poor they are. Perhaps the ‘core to Siberia’ for which Thubron is searching turns out to be an unshakeable desire to believe, a quintessentially Russian hopefulness that is born of faith. Thubron traces it from Dostoevsky through the wreckage of communism to present day Siberia where it appears under other names. Written in a marvelously elegant prose, In Siberia penetrates a mysterious and beautiful part of the world in a way that no other book has been able to do.

Shadow of the Silk Road

There was never one Silk Road but several. The route chosen by Colin Thubron pas*ses through China, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey, taking in the most sterile desert on earth the Taklamakan and the strife torn mountain valleys of today’s conflicts, as he travels from the tomb of the Yellow Emperor the mythic progenitor of the Chinese people to the ancient port of Antioch, by local bus, truck, car occasionally Landrover, horse or camel. He covers 7,000 miles in 8 months, and confesses that it is the most difficult, complex and ambitious journey he has undertaken in 40 years of travel. The Silk Road is a huge network of arteries and veins, splitting and converging across the breadth of Asia. Chinese silk has turned up in the hair of a 10th century BC Egyptian mummy; equally, the tartan plaids of 3000 year old mummies in the Chinese desert echo those of early Celts. To be travelling the Silk Road, writes Colin Thubron, is to be travelling the history of the world: tracing the passage not just of trade and armies, but of ideas, religions and inventions. Yet despite the lure of the history this book is as much about Asia today. Its themes include different Islams oppressed in China; fervent in Afghanistan and Iran; cautiously monitored in Uzbekistan; contrast no cities could be more different than ancient Samarkand and modern Teheran; and the way that today’s borders are meaningless because the true boundaries are made by tribe, ethnicity, language and religion. Shadow of the Silk Road is a brilliant account of an ancient world in modern ferment. From the Hardcover edition.

To a Mountain in Tibet

This is the account of a journey to the holiest mountain on earth, the solitary peak of Kailas in Tibet, sacred to one fifth of humankind. To both Buddhists and Hindus it is the mystic heart of the world and an ancient site of pilgrimage. It has never been climbed. Even today, under Chinese domination, the people of four religions circle the mountain in devotion to different gods. Colin Thubron reached it by foot along the Karnali River, the highest source of the Ganges. His journey is an entry into the culture of today’s Tibet, and a pilgrimage in the wake his mother’s death and the loss of his family. He undertakes it in order to mark the event, to leave a sign of their passage. He also explores his own need for solitude, which has shaped his career as a writer one who travels to places beyond his own history and culture, writing about them and about the journey. To a Mountain in Tibet is at once a powerful travelogue, a fascinated encounter with alien faith, and an intimate personal voyage. It is a haunting and beautiful book, a rare mix of discovery and loss. In its evocation of landscape and variety of exotic peoples, of mythic and spiritual traditions foreign to our own, it is a spectacular achievement from our greatest living travel writer, an artist of formidable literary gifts, uncanny intuition, and wondrous insight.

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