Colin Thubron

Colin Thubron 2010

Colin Gerald Dryden Thubron FRSL (* 14. June 1939 in London ) is a British writer , in addition to novels and travelogues written and among others, the Hawthornden Prize was awarded.

Life

After attending Eton College , he worked briefly for the Hutchinson publishing house and then as a freelance filmmaker for television in Turkey , Japan and Morocco . He made his writing debut in 1967 with the book Mirror to Damascus , which was followed by two other books on the Middle East with The Hills of Adonis: A Quest in Lebanon (1968) and Jerusalem (1969) . In The Hills of Adonis he also reported on the adventurer Hester Stanhope , who between 1810 and her death in 1839, shrouded in legend and ruled eccentrically over a local "empire" in the Druze Mountains of Lebanon .

In 1969 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and in the following years wrote regularly articles and literary reviews in magazines and newspapers such as The Times , The Times Literary Supplement and The Spectator, such as Rory MacLean's book Stalin's Nose .

In 1978 his historical Roman Emperor , set in 312 , appeared, while in Among The Russians (1983) he describes a road trip through the western Soviet Union in the final phase of the Brezhnev era. In his book The Ancient Mariners , published in 1981 , he dealt with topics such as ships of antiquity and shipping and boat building in ancient Egypt .

For the novel A Cruel Madness (1984) he received the Macmillan Silver Pen Award from the British PEN Center . For his travelogue Behind the Wall: A Journey through China (1987) he won both the Hawthornden Prize and the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award.

Then came the novels Falling and Turning Back the Sun (1991), a story about love in exile. In the book The Lost Heart of Asia (1994) he tells of his travels to the recently independent republics of Central Asia and the research into the effects of the collapse of the Soviet Union in this region. After the novel Distance (1996) about a man suffering from amnesia , he traveled again to Russia , whereupon In Siberia (1999) was his last travelogue about this country.

Thubron, who lives in London, wrote another novel, To the Last City (2002), in which he tells the story of a tour group in Peru . Then the travel reports Shadows of the Silk Road (2006) appeared, a representation of his approximately eleven thousand kilometers long journey over the ancient silk roads from China to Turkey, and most recently To a Mountain in Tibet (2011), about his pilgrimage to the holy mountain Kailash .

Since 2010 he has also been President of the Royal Society of Literature.

more publishments

• Journey into Cyprus , 1975
• The God in the Mountain , 1977
• The Venetians , 1980
• The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden , 1982
• The Silk Road: Beyond the Celestial Kingdom , 1989

in German language

• Ed. With Artemis Cooper: Patrick Leigh Fermor : The interrupted journey. From the Iron Gate to Mount Athos. The third part of the journey , from the English by Manfred Allié and Gabriele Kempf-Allié (original title The Broken Road), Dörlemann Verlag Zürich, ISBN 9783908777953 .
• The Hills of Adonis: An Encounter with Lebanon , Original The Hills of Adonis: A Quest in Lebanon , 1970
• Cyprus , original title Journey into Cyrpus , 1976, ISBN 3-7913-0378-3
• Jerusalem , 1976
• Istanbul , 1978, ISBN 90-6182-276-9
• Die Venezier , original title The Venetians , 1981, ISBN 90-6182-415-X
• The ancient seafarers , original title The Ancient Mariners , 1982, ISBN 90-6182-410-9
• Unter Russen , original title Among The Russians , 1984, ISBN 3-7913-0678-2
• In the garden of the dragon: Chinese interior views , original title Behind the Wall: A Journey through China , 1989, ISBN 3-8052-0480-9
• Sterntage , original title Distance , 1998, ISBN 3-548-24339-8
• Siberia: sleeping earth - awakening land , original title In Siberia , 2001, ISBN 3-608-94005-7
• DuMont Travel Adventure In the Shadow of the Silk Road: Along the historical trade route from China to Kurdistan (Original title Shadow of the Silk Road ), 2013, ISBN 978-3770182596
• DuMont Travel Adventure A Mountain in Tibet: Walking through the Himalayas to the holy mountain Kailash (Original title To a Mountain in Tibet ), 2014, ISBN 978-3770182619

Web links

• Literature by and about Colin Thubron in the catalog of the German National Library
• Biography and Bibliography (contemporarywriters.com)
• Author portrait (perlentaucher.de)
• Author portrait (penguin.co.uk)
• THE INDEPENDENT: Colin Thubron: "I wanted to vanish into the background" (July 6, 2002)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ INTELLIGENT LIFE MAGAZINE: 7 Wonders (Winter 2010)
2. ↑ YOU TUBE: Shadow of the Silk Road / Colin Thubron
3. ↑ THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: To a Mountain in Tibet by Colin Thubron: review. Hugh Thomson on a masterpiece of travel writing, To A Mountain in Tibet by Colin Thubron (book review, February 9, 2011)