The Light Garden Of The Angel King: Journeys To Afghanistan
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Very good
Pages: Tanning and foxing
Long before Afghanistan became a byword for conflict and geopolitical strife, the poet and classicist Peter Levi traversed its ancient landscapes and returned with one of the most luminous travel accounts of the twentieth century. The Light Garden of the Angel King: Journeys to Afghanistan chronicles Levi's remarkable overland expeditions through a country of breathtaking archaeological richness, from the towering Buddhas of Bamiyan to the wind-scoured ruins of Greek Bactria, painting a portrait of a civilisation poised at the crossroads of empires. Written in the early 1970s alongside his companion, the journalist Bruce Chatwin, Levi's account captures the extraordinary texture of Afghan life — its nomadic rhythms, its Persian poetry, its crumbling monuments — with the keen eye of a scholar and the lyrical authority of a born writer. Levi's prose moves with a rare elegance, blending classical erudition with an almost devotional sensitivity to place, situating Afghanistan within the grand sweep of Hellenistic, Buddhist, and Islamic history in a way that few Western writers have matched before or since. The work stands as an irreplaceable document of a world that has since been shattered by decades of war, lending it a haunting, elegiac power that transcends mere travel writing. For anyone drawn to the ancient Silk Road civilisations, to the meeting of East and West, or simply to the art of fine prose, this is a book that demands to be read — and one that will leave you mourning a paradise lost.
Author: Peter Levi
Format: Hardback
Genre: Travel & exploration
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Very good
Pages: Tanning and foxing
Long before Afghanistan became a byword for conflict and geopolitical strife, the poet and classicist Peter Levi traversed its ancient landscapes and returned with one of the most luminous travel accounts of the twentieth century. The Light Garden of the Angel King: Journeys to Afghanistan chronicles Levi's remarkable overland expeditions through a country of breathtaking archaeological richness, from the towering Buddhas of Bamiyan to the wind-scoured ruins of Greek Bactria, painting a portrait of a civilisation poised at the crossroads of empires. Written in the early 1970s alongside his companion, the journalist Bruce Chatwin, Levi's account captures the extraordinary texture of Afghan life — its nomadic rhythms, its Persian poetry, its crumbling monuments — with the keen eye of a scholar and the lyrical authority of a born writer. Levi's prose moves with a rare elegance, blending classical erudition with an almost devotional sensitivity to place, situating Afghanistan within the grand sweep of Hellenistic, Buddhist, and Islamic history in a way that few Western writers have matched before or since. The work stands as an irreplaceable document of a world that has since been shattered by decades of war, lending it a haunting, elegiac power that transcends mere travel writing. For anyone drawn to the ancient Silk Road civilisations, to the meeting of East and West, or simply to the art of fine prose, this is a book that demands to be read — and one that will leave you mourning a paradise lost.