The Road to Samarcand

This book has it all! It's historical viewpoint is interesting, there is adventure, humor... even readers unfamiliar with O'Brian's work will enjoy this book. I left this book at the family summer cottage in June and over the course of the summer more than 10 people read it, different ages, genders, interests. ALL of them loved it. I ordered 4 for Christmas gifts.

Judging from this book, Patrick O'Brian was a fan of James Hilton's "Lost Horizon," the classic 1930s paperback that is said to be the first US paperback bestseller. Hilton's wistful look at life in the remote Himalayas (in a fictional village he called "Shangri-La") was written in the 1930s in the shadow of the coming war, whereas O'Brian's book, though written in 1954, is set back in that same time period. And as the journey to Samarcand unfolds, O'Brian's heroes ultimately enter a land of icy, incredibly remote mountains strangely reminiscent of Hilton's lost horizon. Readers of both books will discover still more connections and resonances between them as they get to the later portions of the Road to Samarcand. Still, there's much more to this book to like, particularly the deadpan humor and the deepening character development of what initially seem to be stock comic figures, in classic O'Brian style.

Patrick O'Brian published "The Road to Samarcand" in 1954, even before "The Golden Ocean" and "The Unknown Shore," the two "juvenile" nautical novels that in many ways were precursors of his later great series of novels featuring Captain "Lucky Jack" Aubrey and Doctor Stephen Maturin. "The Road to Samarcan," itself a novel written for a youth audience, is less clearly ancestral to the later series, but there are at least faint foreshadowings, including the Professor Ayrton, the archaeologist cousin of the teenaged central character. Ayrton is both a formidible intellectual presence as well as a source of humor (he is utterly unable to master American slang, despite his easy confidence that he can speak the jargon like a native). Although "The Road to Samarcan" does contain nautical elements (it starts aboard the schooner "Wanderer" in the South China Sea), most of the book involves wild, somewhat improbably adventures in the wilds of western China and Tibet, with encounters with bandits and murderous monks, along with the even greater peril of nature. As might be expected in a Patrick O'Brian tale, the narrative dances through a wide array of subjects, including wildlife, Chinese history, and Tibetan culture. It all makes for a "fun" read, even if it is not up to the level of the Aubrey-Maturin books.

Not quite as polished as the Master and Commander series, but a great read. This time the ocean is the Gobi desert, the Himalayan plateau, and other exotic climes in a world long since gone.

Given O'Brian's cult status, I'm surprised not to see any reviews of this early work up. Briefly, it is a "Boy's Own" type adventure set in Central Asia. Some of the adult character were featured in some of O'Brian's early short stories. I can't prove it, but I'm inclined to think it owes something to Fritz Muhlenweg's "Big Tiger and Christian," which I read as a teenager. I guess I would have to look at the respective dates to build a solid case. The other related fact which springs to mind is that O'Brian's translated "The Horsemen", Joseph Kessel's novel set in Afghanistan, which I suppose is some kind of indication of O'Brian's ongoing interest in Central Asia. "The Horsemen" was later made into a film (1970), starring Omar Sharif. If you enjoy the "The Road to Samarcand", I am pretty sure you'd enjoy "The Horsemen" and "Big Tiger", too. I think O'Brian was adept at reading something like "Big Tiger and Christian" for background and then being able to write something with a similar setting, which as a result of his background reading, coupled with his writing ability, conveyed great authority. There are some marvellous throw away lines which serve to deliniate the charcters, such as the brief mention of a barroom brawl in which an ear was bitten off and a lasting friendship formed. I see the character of the professor in "The Road to Samarcand" as very similar to that of Stephen Maturin, and indeed prehaps prefiguring him - vague, gentlemanly, but capable of ruthless, coldblooded action when necessary. In some ways he is the most strongly drawn charcter. The presence of the adults makes this book rather different to "Big Tiger and Christian", in which the focus is on the resourceful two boys of the title. I can't help thinking that in the hands of someone like Miyazaki Hayao, the story would make a marvelous "anime manga" along the lines of his "Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind" or "Porco Russo."