The Amur River

The most admired travel writer of our time—author of Shadow of the Silk Road and To a Mountain in Tibet—recounts an eye-opening, often perilous journey along a little known Far East Asian river that for over a thousand miles forms the highly contested border between Russia and China.
The Amur River, the tenth longest in the world, speaks to Colin Thubron's desire to travel a remote but vital frontier land, from the river's headwaters in Mongolia to its end in the Pacific Ocean, and to experience the Russia-China confrontation on the ground. As he walks over the bones of the bloody Russian past, and pursues his close encounters with the full vigor of the Chinese present, he introduces readers to a series of idiosyncratic and all-too-human men and women who redefine for us what it means to be Russian or Chinese. With his gift for intimacy and command of both Russian and Mandarin, Thubron portrays the contrasting realities of Russia and China,...