
The Road to Oxiana
1937 · 291 pages
Byron crossed Persia and Afghanistan in the 1930s hunting domes and minarets, and the diary he kept is funny, rapturous, and cruel about everyone he meets. Paul Fussell called it travel writing's Ulysses.
★ 6.8

Byron crossed Persia and Afghanistan in the 1930s hunting domes and minarets, and the diary he kept is funny, rapturous, and cruel about everyone he meets. Paul Fussell called it travel writing's Ulysses.

Fifty thousand couplets carry Iran from creation to the Arab conquest, past a tyrant with snakes growing from his shoulders and the hero Rostam meeting a young champion he does not recognize.