In 1933, the eccentric travel writer Robert Byron set out on a journey through the Middle East via Beirut, Jerusalem, Baghdad and Teheran to Oxiana, near the border between Afghanistan and the Soviet Union. Throughout, he kept a thoroughly captivating record of his encounters, discoveries and frequent misadventures. His story would become a bestselling travel book throughout the English-speaking world, until the acclaim died down and it was gradually forgotten. When Paul Fussell published his own book Abroad, in 1982, he wrote that The Road to Oxiana is to the travel book what “Ulysses is to the novel between the wars, and what The Waste Land is to poetry”. Now this long-overdue reprint will introduce it to a whole new generation of readers. Today, The Road to Oxiana also serves as a rare account of the architectural treasures of a region now inaccessible to most Western travellers, and a nostalgic look back at a more innocent time.

Robert Byron Preface by Rory Stewart Introduction by Paul Fussell

"Certainly the wittiest book, and perhaps the wisest, to have been written in English about Iran."--Christopher de Robert Byron was born in England in 1905 into a family distantly