Alexander's Path: From Caria to Cilicia

In this book Freya Stark extends her Turkish journeys to Pamphylia, Chelidonia, the uplands of Cibyritis and the mountain passes. Compared with her journey in The Lycian Shore, much of which was accomplished by boat in circumstances conducive to a scholarly meditation, Alexander's Path was accomplished by jeep and on horseback involving to a far greater extent the business and adventure of travel through places little frequented and among the inland Turks whose courtesy and generosity to strangers seems unrelated to the meagreness of their resources. But through her own travels there is the story of her search for Alexander the Great and the significance of his friendship with the Queen of Caria. Although much has been written about him yet, strangely enough, his motives and his march through the Anatolian coastlands still lie as it were in a patch of darkness, in spite of the fact that a whole winter out of his brief life was spent in this mountainous and little known region. Perhaps it is his vision of a united world that most stirs our imagination and any links that unite this ancient dream, across the gap of twenty-two centuries, with our own hopes must interest us deeply. This is a travel book of rare imaginative quality by a writer with a unique power of making us feel that we are travelling, and travelling hopefully and with excitement in time as well as space. ‘She has written the best travel books of her generation and her name will survive as an artist in prose.’—Harold Nicolson.