cover image Traveller Through Time: 2a Photographic Journey with Freya Stark

Traveller Through Time: 2a Photographic Journey with Freya Stark

Malise Ruthven. Viking Books, $19.95 (144pp) ISBN 978-0-670-80183-1

Born in Paris, raised in England and Italy by estranged parents, Stark escaped her Victorian upbringing through travel. From North Africa through Central Asia, she traveled, unmarried and poor, recording her impressions in countless photographs. Learning Persian, Turkish, Arabic and Kurdish, this independent woman mingled with sultans and ordinary people, was admitted into harems where no European men could enter and rode camel caravans. A minor celebrity and an agent for Britain's propaganda efforts during World War II, Stark campaigned against fascism and wrote travel books that now sound quaint and romantic. Her striking photographs, reproduced in this illustrated biography by her godson, capture a Bedouin wedding, barges on the Nile, Baghdad's squalor and beauty, Greek ruins in Western Turkey, Burmese pagodas, worshippers in Afghanistan. Ruthven is author of Islam in the World. (October 14)