Colin Thubron Biography
Award-winning travel writer and novelist Colin Thubron was born in London on 14 June 1939. Educated at Eton College, he worked briefly for the publishers Hutchinson, and as a freelance television film-maker in Turkey, Japan and Morocco. His first three books were about the Middle East: Mirror to Damascus,
was published in 1967 and is still considered one of the best books on the Syrian capital; The Hills of Adonis: A Quest in Lebanon (1968) and
Jerusalem (1969).
Among the Russians (1983) describes a journey he made by car through western Russia during the Brezhnev era. Behind the Wall: A Journey through China (1987) won both the Hawthornden Prize and the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award. The Lost Heart of Asia (1994) narrates his travels through the newly-independent central Asian republics, exploring the effects of the collapse of the Soviet Union on the region; and In Siberia (1999) he explores the enormous and mysterious Russian territory of Siberia.
Colin Thubron is also the author of several novels, including a historical
fiction, Emperor (1978), set in A.D. 312; A Cruel Madness (1984),
winner of the PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award; Falling (1989); Turning Back the Sun (1991), a haunting tale of love and exile; and Distance (1996). His most recent novel, To the Last City (2002), tells the story of a group of travelers in Peru.
A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature since 1969, Colin Thubron is a regular contributor and reviewer for magazines and newspapers including The Times, the Times Literary Supplement and The Spectator. A recent travel book of his is Shadows of the Silk Road (UK: 2006; USA: 2007), an account of his 7,000-mile journey along the route of the Silk Road. He lives
in London.
This biography was last updated on 07/27/2011.
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