Land Beyond the River: The Untold Story of Central Asia

By Monica Whitlock

Book Overview

Along the banks of the river once called Oxus lie the heartlands of Central Asia: Uzbekistan and Tajikstan. Catapulted into the news by events in Afghanistan, just across the water, these strategically important, intriguing and beautiful countries remain almost completely unknown to the outside world. In this book, Monica Whitlock goes far beyond the headlines. Using eyewitness accounts, unpublished letters and firsthand reporting, she enters into the lives of the Central Asians and reveals a dramatic and moving human story unfolding over three generations. There is Muhammadjan, called 'Hindustani', a diligent seminary student in the holy city of Bukhara until the 1917 revolution tore up the old order. Exiled to Siberia as a shepherd and then conscripted into the Red Army, he survived to become the inspiration for a new generation of clerics. Henrika was one of tens of thousands of Poles who walked and rode through Central Asia on their way to a new life in Iran, where she lives to this day. Then there were the proud Pioneer children who grew up in the certainty that the Soviet Union would last forever, only to find themselves in a new world that they had never imagined. In Central Asia, the extraordinary is commonplace and there is not a family without a remarkable story to tell. Land Beyond the River is both a chronicle of a century and a clear-eyed, authoritative view of contemporary events.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 031227727X
• ISBN13: 9780312277277
• Release Date: October 2003
• Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 1.41 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.6" x 1.1" x 6.4"

Customer Reviews

A fascinating keyhole through which to view hitherto virtually unknown lives...

Land Beyond the River provides one of the most vivid pictures available of the complex relationship between religion and society in Central Asia. Whitlock, as Martha Olcott of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said, a BBC journalist who lived in Tashkent, which she used as a base to report on the region, offers a highly personalized history of Central Asia. Her vehicle is exploring the lives of two "witnesses" whose lives stretched through the decades of Soviet rule: Muhammadjan Hindustani, a cleric from Kokand who lived out his life in Dushanbe, and Sadr-e Zia, an intellectual from Bukhara. She uses their own words, the memories of their families, and accounts of more recent prominent figures whose activities were in some way touched by one or another of these men. Whitlock is an excellent journalist who developed relationships of great trust with the people who turned over their family materials to her. In the case of Sadr-e Zia, a lot of the material Whitlock used was being edited for publication at the time her book went to press, but she is more vague about the written record that informs her discussion of Hindustani. This is not surprising, given that the Tajik cleric was forced to work and teach in semi-secrecy until nearly his very last days, in 1989 when Mikail Gorbachev's policies of glasnost' (openness) changed state attitudes toward religion. Working in what must have been conditions of partial (or even near total) secrecy while living in Central Asia, Whitlock does not seem to have been given a full portrait of Hindustani, who actually played an even greater role in training many of today's clerics and setting the tone for current religious debates than Whitlock credits him. For this reason, the book is more a fascinating keyhole through which to view hitherto virtually unknown lives than a scholarly contribution.

Compelling story

This is a compelling story well told. Highly recommended for anyone wanting an inside view of current events in Central Asia

Land Beyond the River - Monica Whitlock

This modern history of Central Asia is a primer for those who's knowledge of the region is scarce. BBC Central Asia correspondent Whitlock prepares the reader for the unfolding and unravelling of soviet central asia with the highlights of the regions 20th century history. Using the letters and verbal reminiscences of local people, from ordinary workers, to mullahs, to local and national leaders, she guides us effortlessly from the early parts of the 20th century through the collapse of the soviet state in 1989 and prepares the reader for the events which follow. Monica Whitlock uses archive material and local resources to conjer a descriptive narrative of the region which won't be bettered for years to come

An excellent set of interviews

This comprehensive survey of the Mid East/Soviet areas of Central Asia offers the eyewitness perspective of BBC foreign correspondent Whitlock, who offers a history of the 206th century in following two central Asian families through social and political changes in their regions. What evolves is an excellent set of interviews which blends with unpublished letters and diaries from two families to present a personal account of Central Asia's modern politics and society.