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SAAM Saturday University: The Amur River: Between Russia and China
October 9, 2021 @ 10:00 am - 11:30 am PDT
In this talk, award-winning travel writer Colin Thubron will introduce and discuss his most recent book The Amur River: Between Russia and China.
At the age of 80, Thubron undertook a journey like none other: a 3000-mile trek tracing the enigmatic waterway of the Amur River—the tenth longest river in the world—that winds dangerously between the two superpowers. Long hidden from Western eyes, the Amur River has been the subject of wars, treaties, imperial failures, and horrific genocides. Thubron provides a double vision of past and present as he recounts his travels by horseback through the steppes of Mongolia, and then by wheezing Chinese buses, cars, poachers’ boats, and the Trans-Siberian railroad.
His book is a narrative of stories told and untold: the history lying in museums and Buddhist libraries as well as the everyday struggles and tales of the inhabitants living within these nations. Following his talk, Thubron will be joined for a conversation with Seattle-based author and journalist Blaine Harden. This event is presented in collaboration with the Elliott Bay Book Company.
Saturday University lectures are organized by the Gardner Center for Asian Art and Ideas in collaboration with the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington.
Reprinted courtesy of Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
