Chasing The Sea

Zusatztext 52225182 Informationen zum Autor Tom Bissell was born in Escanaba, Michigan, in 1974. After his stint in the Peace Corps he worked for several years in book publishing in New York City. His criticism, fiction, and journalism have appeared in publications including Harper's Magazine , The Virginia Quarterly Review , GQ , Granta , McSweeney's , The Boston Review , The Believer , Best American Travel Writing 2003 , and other publications. He has been nominated for several awards and not received any of them. He lives in New York City. Klappentext In 1996, Tom Bissell went to Uzbekistan as a na•ve Peace Corps volunteer. Though he lasted only a few months before illness and personal crisis forced him home, Bissell found himself entranced by this remote land. Five years later he returned to explore the shrinking Aral Sea, destroyed by Soviet irrigation policies. Joining up with an exuberant translator named Rustam, Bissell slips more than once through the clutches of the Uzbek police as he makes his often wild way to the devastated sea. In Chasing the Sea, Bissell combines the story of his travels with a beguiling chronicle of Uzbekistan's striking culture and long history of violent subjugation by despots from Jenghiz Khan to Joseph Stalin. Alternately amusing and sobering, this is a gripping portrait of a fascinating place, and the debut of a singularly gifted young writer.One No English April 2001 Anyone parted from his land will weep seven years. Whoever is parted from his tribe will weep until he dies. --central asian proverb April 2001 The night was hot or cold, depending on where one stood. In this it was not unlike swimming in the ocean and feeling across one's belly an amniotic warmth followed immediately by a freezing underwater gale. I paced around on the tarmac, examining the plane that had touched us down safely in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan. The flight in was much fuller than I had expected, and my fellow passengers had disembarked. Most were, like me, standing on the tarmac and looking at the plane. It was dark, and there was not much else to look at. The plane was a fine gold-and-black Lufthansa jumbo jet. Lufthansa was the least dicey airline to fly into Tashkent, though Uzbekistan Airways, the national airline, was also quite good--internationally. Uzbekistan Airways's international flights employed Boeing and British-made jets easily as splendid as Lufthansa's. Uzbekistan was the only former Soviet republic other than Russia to have ever been allowed regular direct flights into the United States, something of which it was deservedly proud. On internal flights, however, Uzbekistan Airways sealed its passengers inside shaky old Russian-made Aeroflot propjets. One rumor I hoped to confirm on this trip was that, before takeoff on these internal flights, Uzbekistan Airways stewardesses poured everyone a heaping shot of vodka, including the captain. Including themselves. Everything smelled hotly of fuel. It was as though we were downwind from a grounded F-15 with its engine at full burn. I remembered this smell. The last time I had smelled Tashkent was as a freshly arrived Peace Corps volunteer with hopes of teaching the natives English. I was not much of a traveler at the time. I used words like "natives." This was five years previous. We had arrived in Tashkent at night. In 1996, only five years after Uzbekistan declared its independence from the Soviet Union, Tashkent's airport seemed ominously dark. When we landed and rolled toward the terminal, I saw that some of the runway lights were flickering. A few were burned out completely. Three-wheeled trucks of strange vehicular provenance sat abandoned along the runway. I remember that some of them were on fire, but this could be an enhanced memory. We deplaned and waited in clubbed silence o...

Product details

• Authors: Tom Bissell
• Publisher: Vintage USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 12.10.2004
• EAN: 9780375727542
• ISBN: 978-0-375-72754-2
• No. of pages: 416
• Dimensions: 135 mm x 205 mm x 22 mm
• Series: Vintage Departures; Vintage Departures
• Subject: Travel > Travel guides > Asia