Colin Thubron

Colin Gerald Dryden Thubron, FRAS (born 14 June 1939) is a British travel writer and novelist. In 2008, "The Times" ranked him among the 50 greatest postwar British writers. He is a contributor to "The New York Review of Books", "The Times", "The Times Literary Supplement" and "The New York Times". His books have been translated into more than twenty languages. Thubron was appointed a CBE in the 2007 New Year Honours. He is a Fellow and, between 2009–2017, was President of the Royal Society of Literature.
Early years.
Thubron is the son of Brigadier Gerald Thubron and of Evelyn (née Dryden), a collateral descendant of the poet John Dryden and of Samuel Finley Morse, inventor of the Morse Code. He was born in London and educated at Eton College. Before becoming a writer he worked for five years in publishing in London and New York City, and made independent documentary films that were shown on BBC television. He is married to the Shakespeare scholar Margreta de Grazia.
The Middle East.
Thubron's first travel book, "Mirror to Damascus", was published in 1967, the first such book on the city for a century. It was followed the next year by "The Hills of Adonis: A Quest in Lebanon", a lyrical account of a journey through the country, pre-civil war, and the next year by "Jerusalem." While starting a parallel career as a novelist, he completed a travel book on Cyprus, "Journey into Cyprus", in 1974, just before Turkey invaded the island.
Russia and the Far East.
In 1981, during the Brezhnev era, Thubron broke with his earlier work (on cities and small countries) and travelled by car into the Soviet Union, a journey recorded in "Among the Russians". This was followed in 1987 by "Behind the Wall: A Journey Through China "(winner of the Hawthornden Prize and the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award), and in 1994 by "The Lost Heart of Asia", the record of a journey through the newly independent nations of Central Asia.
In 1999 came "In Siberia"(Prix Bouvier, France), an exploration of the farthest reaches of the ex-Soviet Union, and in 2007, "Shadow of the Silk Road", which describes a 7,000-mile journey from China to the Mediterranean encompassing cultures that Thubron has been obsessed with: Islam, China, the former Soviet Union, Central Asia, Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey.
Fiction.
Most of Thubron's novels are notably different from his travel books. Several describe settings of enforced immobility: a mental hospital, a prison, an amnesiac's mind. Notable among them are "Emperor" (1978), a study of the conversion of Constantine, "A Cruel Madness" (winner of the PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award), and "Falling" (1989). Others, however, use travel or a fictional abroad: "Turning Back the Sun" (1991) and an imaginary journey to Vilcabamba in Peru: "To the Last City "(2002), long-listed for the Man Booker Prize. It has been described as a "Heart of Darkness narrative" in a "Marquezian setting". His most recent novel, "Night of Fire", is his most ambitious: a multi-layered study of time and memory, which several reviewers named his masterpiece.
Thubron says that he was influenced by "Palgrave's Golden Treasury" as a schoolboy, and was initially inspired by the travel writing of Patrick Leigh Fermor, Jan Morris and Freya Stark. He admires the English novelist William Golding and chose Victor Gollancz's anthology "A Year of Grace" as his book for "Desert Island Discs".