The Road to Oxiana. by Byron, Robert - 1937

London: Macmillan & Company, 1937. First edition of the author's masterpiece. Octavo, original cloth, frontispiece, 15 plates and a map. Fine in a near fine dust jacket with a touch of wear. An exceptional example. In 1933, the delightfully eccentric travel writer Robert Byron set out on a journey through the Middle East via Beirut, Jerusalem, Baghdad and Teheran to Oxiana, near the border between Afghanistan and the Soviet Union. Throughout, he kept a thoroughly captivating record of his encounters, discoveries, and frequent misadventures. His story would become a best-selling travel book throughout the English-speaking world, until the acclaim died down and it was gradually forgotten. When Paul Fussell published his own book Abroad, in 1982, he wrote that The Road to Oxiana is to the travel book what "Ulysses is to the novel between the wars, and what The Waste Land is to poetry."