Thubron, Colin

▪ British author

born June 14, 1939, London, Eng.

      British travel writer and novelist whose works, often set in foreign locales, explore love, memory, and the loss of faith, as well as the differences between the ideal and the real.

      After attending Eton College, Thubron worked as an editor at publishing houses in London and New York City. In 1965 he became a freelance documentary filmmaker and writer. Thubron's books about the Middle East, including Mirror to Damascus (1967) and Journey into Cyprus (1975), established him as a travel writer of original sensibility. Another travel book, Among the Russians (1983; U.S. title, Where Nights Are Longest), chronicles a 10,000-mile (16,000-km) journey by car across what was then the Soviet Union; it was praised for its richly textured descriptions of Russian life. The Lost Heart of Asia (1994), In Siberia (1999), and Shadow of the Silk Road (2006) describe Thubron's journeys through the lands of Central Asia.

      Thubron's gift for capturing the character of the countries he observed translated well into fiction. The setting of his third novel, A Cruel Madness (1984), is an insane asylum, where the narrator, a patient, searches for a woman with whom he once had an affair. Falling (1989) involves a paralyzed trapeze artist who begs her lover to kill her. The allegorical 1991 novel Turning Back the Sun has been compared to the novels of Graham Greene (Greene, Graham). Other works by Thubron include Emperor (1978), Distance (1996), and To the Last City (2002). In 2006 he was made a Commander of the British Empire.

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