Freya Madeline Stark

From Goodreads: Freya Stark is a woman of prodigious energy, talent and longevity. Born in Paris in 1893, she was brought up in France, Italy and England. As a young woman she traveled alone to the Arab lands. She captured those journeys in two dozen excellent volumes of biography and travel. TRAVELLER'S PRELUDE is the story of her early life. The author's accomplishments are all the more remarkable because she received no formal schooling. She did in fact enter the University of London, but WW II intervened, and she became a nurse on the Italian front. Her travels in the Mideast followed these adventures. Freya Stark is a unique talent. Like Isak Dinesen she has the poet's voice. Like Beryl Markham she has led a vigorous, exploring life.

From Goodreads: THE COAST OF INCENSE is the third book in Freya Stark's autobiography. It covers the middle years (1933-1939). The author emerges as an intelligent and gifted woman, a sensitive observer and a courageous traveler. Her vivid, intimate descriptions of Egypt, the Persian Gulf, Greece, Italy and the Middle East allows us to travel vicariously with every turn of the page. A sunset in Aden, the treasures of Tutankhamen, dinner with the Sheikh of Kuwait, a visit to the Queen of Iraq, a journey on the Orient Express--all are brought to life. The real focus of this book, however, is the author's introduction to South Arabia, "whose distant, severe and unimaginable beauty lives in my heart."

The twelfth-century minaret of Djam is one of Afghanistan's most celebrated treasures, a magnificent symbol of the powerful Ghorid Empire that once stretched from Iran to India. The second talles brick minaret in the world, Djam lies in the heart of central Afghanistan's wild Ghor Province.

104 p. : 27 cm

From Amazon.com: Hailed as a classic upon its first publication in 1934, The Valleys of the Assassins firmly established Freya Stark as one of her generation's most intrepid explorers. The book chronicles her travels into Luristan, the mountainous terrain nestled between Iraq and present-day Iran, often with only a single guide and on a shoestring budget. Stark writes engagingly of the nomadic peoples who inhabit the region's valleys and brings to life the stories of the ancient kingdoms of the Middle East, including that of the Lords of Alamut, a band of hashish-eating terrorists whose stronghold in the Elburz Mountains Stark was the first to document for the Royal Geographical Society. Her account is at once a highly readable travel narrative and a richly drawn, sympathetic portrait of a people told from their own compelling point of view.

From Goodreads: When Freya Stark travelled along Turkey's west coast in 1952 she met only one other tourist. Today, this region is the most popular in the country, but to travel with Stark — whose aim was to 'create a guidebook in time' — is to experience Turkey in a richer & more inspiring way than any modern guide or history can provide. In the ruins & vanished cities of Ionia lay the record of history — of what made us what we are today. Her longing to know more, to unearth the living from the wreckage of the past & to discover the ingredients that shaped the ancient world drove her forward. With Herodotus as her travelling companion, she began her quest in Smyrna & traced a route thru the ancient cities of Asia Minor, which were haunted by echoes of Odysseus & Alexander the Great, by the poets, philosophers, musicians & mathematicians who flourished in this world. Wandering beyond the boundaries of travel, she entered into the soul of ancient Ionia, examining the ever-present tension between East & West & the elements of religion, society & commerce that forged the culture of a civilisation. A journey thru the ancient world that resonates in the modern, her Ionia is travel writing at its most elegant & history at its most dynamic — a powerful & beautifully-rendered classic of 20th century literature.