![]() ![]() Harris links the impulse for the journey to a youthful fascination with Marco Polo, when she would trace and study his route “as it laced and frayed past Constantinople, Trabzon, Erzurum, Bukhara, Samarkand, Badakhshan, Kashgar, Khotan, Cathay, each name an invitation to elsewhere.”Īs she grew older, her interest in the great unknown settled on Mars: She planned to become an astronaut, but midway through her Ph.D., realized the life of a Martian colonist was as much about confinement as freedom, and the path there involved a long detour to a windowless basement laboratory. Her retelling of the trip makes for a travelogue infused with science, history, and literature stretching from sea level to the roof of the world. ![]() Kate Harris’ debut work, Lands of Lost Borders, opens with a Virginia Woolf epigraph declaring, “We are forever mixing ourselves with unknown quantities,” which is the essential mission behind Harris’ plan to bicycle across Asia, tracing the ancient Silk Road. ![]()
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