| Main centres: | 1-3 business days |
| Regional areas: | 3-4 business days |
| Remote areas: | 3-5 business days |
Published by Little, Brown, 1976, hardcover, illustrated, index, 240 pages, condition: very good.
The book chronicles the journeys of European travelers who ventured into Asia between the 13th and early 20th centuries. This work explores the "Oriental Adventure" through the eyes of various Westernersincluding traders, missionaries, diplomats, and spieswho traveled beyond the "Stone Tower" into India, Siberia, China, and Southeast Asia. The book is not a traditional story of "pioneering" exploration, as the encountered were often older and more advanced than those of the travelers. It covers a wide procession of travelers, starting from Marco Polo through to 20th-century explorers.
TIM SEVERIN has made a career of retracing the storied journeys of mythical and historical figures. He has sailed a leather boat across the Atlantic in the wake of the Irish monk Saint Brendan, captained an Arab sailing ship from Muscat to China, steered the replica of a Bronze Age galley to seek the landfalls of Jason and the Argonauts and Ulysses, ridden the route of the First Crusade from a castle in Belgium to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, travelled on horseback with the nomads of Mongolia to explore the heritage of Genghis Khan, sailed the Pacific on a bamboo raft to test the theory that ancient Chinese mariners could have travelled to the Americas, retraced the journeys of Alfred Russel Wallace, Victorian pioneer naturalist, through the Spice Islands of Indonesia aboard a native sailing vessel, identified the facts behind the story of Moby Dick the fighting white whale among the native peoples of the Pacific islands, and discovered the origins of the real Robinson Crusoe in the adventures of a castaway stranded 300 years ago on a desert island off the coast of Venezuela.
As a historical novelist he has written the best-selling VIKING and HECTOR LYNCH trilogies. The Book of Dreams, the first volume of his SAXON trilogy was published in August 2012
His travels have been the subject of award winning documentary films and a major BBC documentary series, and are collected under the title TIME TRAVELLER. They have been screened on Discovery Channel, Sky Television, and National Geographic TV, and he has written regularly about his expeditions in the National Geographic Magazine. He has won the Thomas Cook Travel Book award, The Book of the Sea Award, a Christopher Prize, the Sykes Medal of the Society of Asian Affairs, and the literary Medal of the Academie de Marine. His replica boats have become museum exhibits. In l986 he was awarded the Gold Medal (Founder's Medal) of the Royal Geographical Society for his research into early voyages, and in 1987 the Livingstone Medal of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society.
