Less passive than Bruce Chatwin and more generous than Paul Theroux,<\/p>\n
Tsur Shezaf transverses the Silk Road and two thousand and something<\/p>\n
years. He is not seeking horses and the culture of the West, that is<\/p>\n
India, like the Chinese, nor does he want to peddle Christianity or do<\/p>\n
business, like many before him who followed the road from west to east\u2026.<\/p>\n
All doors opened before the writer bearing the British passport, the<\/p>\n
Israeli “chutzpah,” the thirst for knowledge and the lust for adventure.<\/p>\n
He accomplished it quickly and worked hard, and in happy contrast to the<\/p>\n
few other travel books that have been published in Hebrew, he has also<\/p>\n
done some reading. His swift and rhythmic prose – in which in which<\/p>\n
short descriptions, bits of conversations, and cogent historical<\/p>\n
summaries – punctuated by quotations, references names and extracts from<\/p>\n
interviews — is a kind of courtesy: he who has heard, heard, he who has<\/p>\n
thought, thought, and he who has not is also just fine. The signposts<\/p>\n
Shezaf has handsomely though not bothersomely sown along the way will<\/p>\n
make the reader think. Or not. It is possible to enjoy the energetic<\/p>\n
musicianship even without puzzling out the staccato.<\/p>\n
\n
Anyone who has ever dreamt of Samarkand, Don Huang, Marco Polo, Ibn<\/p>\n
Batuta, Benjamin of Toledo, Shuan Dzang,<\/p>\n
Errol Stein, Bukhara or Kashgar knows at least in a general way what<\/p>\n
motivates this book. And after quickly reading through its dense pages,<\/p>\n
I can only thank Tsur Shezaf for doing so much to bring reality to these<\/p>\n
magical names, and doing so without diminishing their enchantment.<\/p>\n
\n
Dan Daor<\/p>\n
\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tsur Shezaf, in his unique language and style, describes encounters in\u00a0the distant deserts of Tibet and Somalia as well as in deserts closer at\u00a0hand – the Arab Desert in Jordan, the Sahara, the Sinai and the Negev.<\/p>\n
On the background of the awe of the desert, traveling in trains, in\u00a0buses, in taxis and in airplanes, Shezaf encounters Berbers, Kashmiris,\u00a0Ladaks and Bedouin. Is the desert the arid Tibetan plateau? Or the\u00a0wandering sands of the Sahara? Or perhaps it is the dry savannahs of<\/p>\n
Somalia during the civil war there when the inhabitants were dying of\u00a0starvation? Shezaf, a veteran traveler and an experienced writer, may\u00a0already definitely be considered one of the pioneers in the field of\u00a0Hebrew travel writing. In his accounts, he develops the description of<\/p>\n
the journey as the backbone of the plot and as a literary framework in\u00a0\u00a0 its own right. His ability to observe and describe make reading this book engaging and interesting. Tsur Shezaf, who has traveled on the Trans-Siberian railway and followed the Silk Road, knows just what a great traveler is.<\/p>\n
Moshe Gila’d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":15023,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"product_brand":[],"product_cat":[219,220],"product_tag":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-17267","1":"product","2":"type-product","3":"status-publish","4":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"product_cat-books-and-travel-guides-en","7":"product_cat-travel-books-en","9":"first","10":"instock","11":"shipping-taxable","12":"product-type-simple"},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n