Skip to main content

Colin Thubron

Biography

Colin Thubron

Colin Thubron is an acknowledged master of travel writing. His first books were about the Middle East --- Damascus, Lebanon and Cyprus. In 1982 he traveled in the Soviet Union, pursued by the KGB. From these early experiences developed his great travel books on the landmass that makes up Russia and Asia: AMONG THE RUSSIANS; BEHIND THE WALL: A Journey Through China; THE LOST HEART OF ASIA; IN SIBERIA; and most recently, SHADOW OF THE SILK ROAD.

Colin Thubron is an award-winning novelist as well as, arguably, the most admired travel writer of our time. He lives in London.

Colin Thubron

Books by Colin Thubron

by Colin Thubron - Fiction

A house is burning, threatening the existence of its six tenants --- including a failed priest; a naturalist; a neurosurgeon; an invalid dreaming of his anxious boyhood; and their landlord, whose relationship to the tenants is both intimate and shadowy. In NIGHT OF FIRE, the passions and obsessions in a dying house loom and shift, from those of the hallucinating drug addict in the basement to the landlord training his rooftop telescope on the night skies. As the novel progresses, the tenants’ diverse stories take us through an African refugee camp, Greek Orthodox monasteries, and the cremation grounds of India. Haunting the edges of their lives are memories. Will these remembrances be consumed forever by the flames? Or can they survive in some form?

by Colin Thubron - Nonfiction

Colin Thubron's TO A MOUNTAIN IN TIBET is a memoir of discovery and loss, chronicling the author's journey to the holiest mountain on earth, the solitary peak of Kailas in modern-day Tibet. To Buddhists and Hindus, it is the mystic heart of the world and an ancient site of pilgrimage. It has never been climbed.