Books : A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush
Binding: Hardcover
EAN: 9780330350426
ISBN: 0330350420
Label: Pan Books
Manufacturer: Pan Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 232
Publication Date: 1998-09
Publisher: Pan Books
Sales Rank: 5707708
Studio: Pan Books
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
This frank and funny account of an ill-prepared Himalayan expedition, taking the reader from London to the wilds of Afghanistan, is one of the classics of travel writing.
Amazon.com Review:
For more than a decade following the end of World War II, Eric Newby toiled away in the British fashion industry, peddling some of the ugliest clothes on the planet. (Regarding one wafer-thin model in her runway best, he was reminded of "those flagpoles they put up in the Mall when the Queen comes home.") Fortunately, Newby reached the end his haute-couture tether in 1956. At that point, with the sort of sublime impulsiveness that's forbidden to fictional characters but endemic to real ones, he decided to visit a remote corner of Afghanistan, where no Englishman had planted his brogans for at least 50 years. What's more, he recorded his adventure in a classic narrative, A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush. The title, of course, is a fine example of Newby's habitual self-effacement, since his journey--which included a near-ascent of the 19,800-foot Mir Samir--was anything but short. And his book seems to furnish a missing link between the great Britannic wanderers of the Victorian era and such contemporary jungle nuts as Redmond O'Hanlon.
At times it also brings to mind Evelyn Waugh, who contributed the preface. Newby is a less acidulous writer, to be sure, and he has little interest in launching the sort of heat-seeking satiric missiles that were Waugh's specialty. Still, A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush is a hilarious read. The author excels at the dispiriting snapshot, capturing, say, the Afghan backwater of Fariman in two crisp sentences: "A whole gale of wind was blowing, tearing up the surface of the main street. Except for two policemen holding hands and a dog whose hind legs were paralysed it was deserted." His capsule history of Nuristan also gets in some sly digs at Britain's special relationship with the violence-prone Abdur Rahman: Officially his subsidy had just been increased from 12,000 to 16,000 lakhs of rupees. To the British he had fully justified their selection of him as Amir of Afghanistan and, apart from the few foibles remarked by Lord Curzon, like flaying people alive who displeased him, blowing them from the mouths of cannon, or standing them up to the neck in pools of water on the summits of high mountains and letting them freeze solid, he had done nothing to which exception could be taken. Newby also surpasses Waugh--and indeed, most other travel writers--in another important respect: he's miraculously free of solipsism. Even the keenest literary voyagers tend to be, in the purest sense of the term, self-centered. But A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush includes wonderfully oblique portraits of the author's travel companion, Hugh Carless, and his wife, Wanda (who plays a starring role in such subsequent chronicles as Slowly down the Ganges). There are also dozens of brilliant cameo parts, and an indelible record of a stunning landscape. The roof of the world is, in Newby's rendering, both an absolute heaven and a low-oxygen hell. Yet the author never pretends to pit himself against a malicious Nature--his mountains are, in Frost's memorable phrase, too lofty and original to rage. Which is yet another reason to call this little masterpiece a peak performance. --James Marcus
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
What can I say...a thoroughly enjoyable read (and I've reread this book several times)! Newby and his companion are "innocents abroad" and his recounting of their misadventures kept me chuckling throughout.
If you're looking for deep insights into the Afghan culture and people, this isn't the book for you. But if you enjoy travel-writing told with a dry wit, then check it out.
Oh, and by the way...if you're a fan of Wilfred "Arabian Sands" Thesiger, don't miss Newby's chance encounter with him at the end of the book. Good for a laugh!
Great stuff!
Rating: -
Ok, I have read the reviews about this book, most of which have "got it" and some of whom have not. Firstly get a map or even better a globe (a kind of round map) and see just how far London (England) is from Afghanistan. Now try and imagine driving there in a family car, not one of those road going ocean liners known I believe as "SUV's", through countries, some of which are considered too dangerous for westerners to enter.
Remember that even at the time of writing, Britain was still recovering from the effects of WW2, indeed rationing continued until 1954, and those who had the money to travel might have considered a trip by train to Blackpool (a seaside resort in the north-west of England) quite an adventure. So the idea of on a whim jumping into the family jalopy and driving 2/3 of the way around the world might be considered a tad eccentric. The 2 adventurers are total amateurs, if I remember rightly; they are stuck on a glacier half way up the mountain, and have to refer to their mountain climbing textbook on how to get off it!
Imagine 2 gentlemen after having a couple of gliding lessons deciding to build a rocket in their back garden and go into space? That's the sort of order of magnitude of adventure that Newby and Carless embarked on. Also one has to bear in mind that in the 50's, Afghanistan was to all intents and purposes cut off from the "modern" world and quite literally the back of beyond.
As a Brit, I am aware of the issues ... Read More
Rating: -
I love this book, his humor and imagination, the descriptions. It's his best!
Highly Recommended!
Rating: -
I got this book on the recommendation from the book Afghanistan: A Companion and Guide, which described it as "among the best travel books ever written". Having read the book, I would have to agree.
This book could be a humor book almost as much as a travel book. Newby's style of writing is, at times, felt like watching a Monty Python sketch in its dry British humor and the unexpected places that one constantly found it coming up.
Eric Newby starts the book as a man working in the fashion industry after World War II, who realizes that he's in the wrong job. He calls up a friend who worked for the foreign service in Afghanistan and asks him if he wants to go to Nuristan in northeast Afghanistan. He quits he jobs, does four days of mountain climbing in Great Britian, and heads off.
I will not spoil the adventures he has just in getting there but will say that they are amazing, unexpected and fascinating. You really get the sense of a seat-of-your-pants road trip in the way that he almost blindly goes into what would be anyone's trip of a lifetime.
His description of Afghanistan and its people who he meets and who guide him is wonderful and accurate to everything I have seen in this country myself. To anyone who likes travel books or simply wants to read a fascinating adventure, you need to read this book.
Rating: -
"A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush" by Eric Newby (1958) is a minor classic among travel books that was, recently for me, a true pleasure to read. It's new info, insightful, light but not shallow, humorous, yet apropos to current events. Its preface by one of my favorite 'snobs' (Evelyn Waugh) was enough recommendation for me. An amateur British mountain climber with his sidekick in the wild mountains of North-east Afghanistan. Very subtle, very English. Eric Newby died in 2006. I'm happy he was a writer.
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