Cultured Travel Guide Books - The Valleys of the Assassins: and Other Persian Travels (Modern Library Paperbacks) |
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 915.5045
EAN: 9780375757532
ISBN: 0375757538
Label: Modern Library
Manufacturer: Modern Library
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 320
Publication Date: 2001-07-24
Publisher: Modern Library
Release Date: 2001-07-24
Studio: Modern Library |
| Spotlight Customer Reviews: |
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Great Travel Writing in a World Beyond
Comment: This extraordinary writer, traveler, adventurer, a woman greater even than her exceptional circumstances, leads us into a magical realm as remote in her time as in Alexander's, and like Herodotus, reveals the intimacies in the history of the people who live there. As a travel book, as a geographical study, as research or recreation, Freya Stark is still, even today, a marvel.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great Armchair Adventure...
Comment: I first read an earlier edition of The Valleys of the Assassins: and Other Persian Travels (Modern Library Paperbacks) nearly 40 years ago while working in Tehran. At that time, it was the primary inspiration for a one-day excursion into the Alamut region with a few friends in a '66 Pontiac convertible, executed with all of the carefree abandon of Ms. Stark. I was delighted to find this reprint in 2001 [as well as The Southern Gates of Arabia: A Journey in the Hadhramaut (Modern Library Paperbacks)] as I searched for greater understanding of the people of the Middle East in the wake of September 11th, just as she had successfully done throughout her lifetime of exploration and writing about these ancient civilizations.
The real enjoyment of reading about her colorful adventures comes from her insights into the region as a journalist and the origins of the people, along with her vivid descriptions of life and her dry wit. When you think of this Western woman, often traveling alone, moving throughout the Muslim world of the 1930s [one that hadn't changed in centuries] you become instantly in awe. By simply reading at random any passage that she wrote, you are turned into the traveling companion of this amazing lady and shown those people and their customs in lands that are now forever lost to us, with Stark's compelling words being the only exception. Her true gifts to the world are these wonderful sojourns into the past.
Bob Magnant is the author of The Last Transition... - a fact-based novel about Iran, Iraq and the Middle East...
Customer Rating:
Summary: Valley of the Assassins
Comment: Freja Stark does an outstanding job bringing to life the wilds of early 20th century Iran! I could imagine myself being right there with her.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: An amazing lady
Comment: The qualities of this book are many. First, the style is fine, humorous, and above all,
flowing and unassuming. The information is indeed an insider's one: Mrs Stark speaks fluently persian, and therefore talks directly to the characters she meets. Moreover, she did her homework and is quite learned on the ancient civilizations which
flourished in the areas she describes. So, it is an excellent reading full of valuable informations on a bygone era.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Dull, Perhaps, But Groundbreaking
Comment: I agree with much of what is said in the reviews below: Stark's travelogues aren't to be read in bed if you have any intention of keeping your eyes open for more than a dozen pages or so. Her writing is clear and concise, but not scintillating by any means. What's of interest in this book is less the style of writing and more the travels themselves. Here was a single woman in the 1930s traveling in an area of the world virtually unknown to Westerners, making the radical choices, for instance, to study the Koran and live with the locals. She was a true radical of her own time who dared to tread places that Marco Polo didn't even approach, despite his (in)famous claims to the contrary.
As for the criticism of the lack of maps in the book that some of the reviewers here have brought up -- well, that may be a criticism directed at the publisher, but it shouldn't be aimed at Stark. The maps that are in the book are the ones that Stark made herself during her travels and handed over to the Royal Geographic Society, and are considered the first Western maps of the area. In my own research, I was in contact with the Society repeatedly, trying to procure additional maps of the Elburz Mountain region for background information on Vladimir Bartol's ALAMUT, an historical novel based on the most famous Valley of the Assassin resident, Hasan ibn Sabbah. Frankly, Stark's maps are some of the few that actually exist, even to this day. The area of her travels -- perhaps aside from CIA maps that we mere mortals are not privy to -- has not been mapped very well. Spend a few hours scouring antiquarian map collectors and see what you come up with. True, it would have been helpful for the publisher to add some basic "Rand McNally" type overviews of her route, but a criticism of Stark on this point is completely beside the point and neglects to recognize her true contribution to the literature.
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| Editorial Reviews: |
Hailed as a classic upon its first publication in 1934, The Valleys of the Assassins firmly established Freya Stark as one of her generation's most intrepid explorers. The book chronicles her travels into Luristan, the mountainous terrain nestled between Iraq and present-day Iran, often with only a single guide and on a shoestring budget.
Stark writes engagingly of the nomadic peoples who inhabit the region's valleys and brings to life the stories of the ancient kingdoms of the Middle East, including that of the Lords of Alamut, a band of hashish-eating terrorists whose stronghold in the Elburz Mountains Stark was the first to document for the Royal Geographical Society. Her account is at once a highly readable travel narrative and a richly drawn, sympathetic portrait of a people told from their own compelling point of view.
This edition includes a new Introduction by Jane Fletcher Geniesse, Stark's biographer.
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