Join 350,000+ subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of
The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.
You are now subscribed
Your newsletter sign-up was successful
Want to add more newsletters?
An account already exists for this email address, please log in.
The Age of the Strongman by Gideon Rachman: a timely and depressing book
Rachman analyses strategies used by Putin, Duterte and Bolsonaro to hold onto power
“Ever since Dervla Murphy packed a pistol and pedalled from Ireland to India in 1963, recounting her adventures in Full Tilt, there has been a demand for two-wheeled adventure tales,” said Caroline Eden in the FT.
The Slow Road to Tehran is the latest addition to the genre: in it, British journalist Rebecca Lowe describes her year-long, 11,000km trip through the Middle East on a bicycle she names “Maud”. Lowe admits she was unprepared to the point of foolhardiness: she set out having had “zero hours of training”, and didn’t bother to map out her terrain in advance. “We think you’ll probably die,” her family told her.
She proves, however, a “thrillingly single-minded” adventurer, and is “so refreshingly self-deprecating that you cannot help but root for her”. Her book isn’t perfect – she crams too much into it – but her “travel for travel’s sake” ethos is refreshing, and most of her stories are “highly entertaining”.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.
Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.
Lowe had an inkling that, as a solo female traveller, her experiences would be enhanced by her vulnerability, said James Barr in The Times. This intuition proves largely correct, though it does expose her to much unpleasantness: in Lebanon, a man pulls down the window of his black Mercedes, and says simply, “Sex”; “in Egypt, she is relieved then horrified when a passing tuk-tuk driver who has just slapped her bottom is stopped and beaten up by the policemen who are shadowing her”.
She has a talent for getting people to talk to her, and these conversations form the basis of sharp “vignettes”, said Tom Chesshyre in The Critic. Carefully researched, and laced with wry humour, this is “modern travel writing at its best”. When Lowe finally arrives at Tehran’s airport – and checks in her “much-dented and repaired bicycle – I couldn’t help but whisper: bravo!”
September Publishing 416pp; £18.99
The Week Bookshop
Sign up for our Culture & Life newsletter
Your weekly digest of stories about entertainment and leisure, delivered every Friday
To order this title or any other book in print, visit theweekbookshop.co.uk, or speak to a bookseller on 020-3176 3835. Opening times: Monday to Saturday 9am-5.30pm and Sunday 10am-4pm.
