Chasing the Sea: Lost Among the Ghosts of Empire in Central Asia | Tom Bissell

Chasing the Sea: Lost Among the Ghosts of Empire in Central Asia | Tom Bissell | Been there, done that, GREAT BOOK

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Chasing the Sea: L...

	Chasing the Sea: Lost Among the Ghosts of Empire in Central Asia Tom Bissell, 2003 - 416 pages average customer review:based on 54 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

In 1960, the Aral Sea was the size of Lake Michigan: a huge body of water in the deserts of Central Asia. By 1996, when Tom Bissell arrived in Uzbekistan as a naïve Peace Corps volunteer, disastrous Soviet irrigation policies had shrunk the sea to a third its size. Bissell lasted only a few months before complications forced him to return home, but he had already become obsessed with this beautiful, brutal land.

Five years later, Bissell convinces a magazine to send him to Central Asia to investigate the Aral Sea?s destruction. There, he joins forces with a high-spirited young Uzbek named Rustam, and together they make their often wild way through the ancient cities?Tashkent, Samarkand, Bukhara?of this fascinating but often misunderstood part of the world. Slipping more than once through the clutches of the Uzbek police, who suspect them of crimes ranging from Christian evangelism to heroin smuggling, the two young men develop an unlikely friendship as they journey to the shores of the devastated sea.

Along the way, Bissell provides a history of the Uzbeks, recounting their region?s long, violent subjugation by despots such as Jenghiz Khan and Joseph Stalin. He conjures the people of Uzbekistan with depth and empathy, and he captures their contemporary struggles to cope with Islamist terrorism, the legacy of totalitarianism, and the profound environmental and human damage wrought by the sea?s disappearance.
Sometimes hilarious, sometimes powerfully sobering, Chasing the Sea is a gripping portrait of an unfamiliar land and the debut of a gifted young writer.

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A Highly Readable Book

Mr. Bissell has written a very entertaining book that is well worth reading. I image him bristling if he ever sees my comments, knowing his scathing sarcasm. Yet his prose is extraordinarily and enormously engaging. I leave it to others to summarize chapters, an exercise in tedium. And should readers choose to ignore this fine book, such descriptions are useless.

I leave only a simple comment: I learned more about Uzbekistan in this volume than I anticipated or planned to know.

The country is bisected. People are analyzed and situations enjoyed, and we readers are welcomed to table and intimate conversations. A terrible thing has happened. I only wish Mr. Bissell had spent more time actually on this lost sea, an environmental catastrophe. The Soviet experiment is something we should all profit from. And this book deserves a greater readership if only for that reason.

Mr. Bissell's work cannot be easily described, as he freely admits at the beginning. This is not a travel document or history, although there are enough of both to satisfy the most ardent traveler or historian. I was only left with one question, an unimportant one that hardly detracts from the work: Is Rustam reliable or a scammer? Mr. Bissell seems not to mind or care, clearly trusting him in many venues and thrusting scarce funds at him for apparently frivolous excuses. Still, I wonder.

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Been there, done that, GREAT BOOK

Ever since reading Stein many years ago, I *knew* that I had to go to Central Asia someday to see what was there.

Having just covered the same geography as the author [overland], I would recommend this book as the most realistic on Central Asia of the current batch out there. Yes, he obsesses about his personal demons as a PCV, but the "live narrative" is totally on target. The schizophrenic centrally planned economy, plus the crazy law enforcement plus the sleazy corruption everywhere [in the airport "we have security cameras" --- i.e. place your bribe inside your ticket envelope to get a boarding pass], etc. etc.

I think some of the history a little potted and ripped off from other sources, stressing the blood and guts of the events. But the importance of the Central Asian states and transfer of technology and goods is lost on those of us with a Western education. One can also see the frozen-in-time fallout from the end of the Soviet Union, with people and infrastructure just left to rust into ruin. The collapse of modern states is an issue which will touch all of us at some time in future.

This is a quick and informative way to open you eyes and perhaps to whet your interest in travel to this area.

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You can go home again....but maybe you shouldn't

Ambivalence is a part of modern life. We can't escape it in the complex modern world. Those who want to live without ambivalence may wind up in some kind of fundamentalist movement that promotes the "only truth". Me, I'm ambivalent about a lot of things. However, sometimes you run across a Mt. Everest of ambivalence, the epitome of having conflicting feelings about something, the man who celebrates Yom Kippur every single day.....God forgive my sins, I am a rotten person. God, save me because I'm not so bad after all. CHASING THE SEA evokes these feelings in me. It's a damn good book in a way, but why do we need to follow the gnashing of the teeth, the midnight soul cringings of one Tom Bissell ? This is a guy who went to Uzbekistan in the Peace Corps, copped out for his own reasons, but couldn't live with them, went back, still didn't much like the place, and wrote a book on his experiences which would definitely get him banned permanently not to mention plunging his Uzbek acquaintances into political difficulties (which could prove fatal in that unlucky land). He undertook to bring money to the wife of an exile---he failed to do so. He finds much of Uzbek life unpleasant; the persistence of Soviet influence, the secret police, the corruption, the violence, the garbage, the lack of compassion for others, the food, the ugly architecture. He likes comfort, but he doesn't much like the 'Americanization' that occurs when the comfort exists. He didn't like most of the Westerners he met, with a few exceptions. What did he like ? Ah, this is where it gets messy. He liked the fact that he went back and wrote about it, though it seems to me he only stayed five weeks. His trip redeemed himself in his own eyes, but he managed to write a grassroots report from Uzbekistan nonetheless. His stated aim was to write about the ecological disaster of the Aral Sea. The book has 353 pages, but he only begins to write about it on page 302. Ambivalence yet again---should I really write what I came to write, or shall I not ? Did I really come to do that, or is it only an excuse to pursue my inner demons? He does write. He does it well. The ending is excellent, perhaps the best part of the book, with a more-than-decent ecological message for everyone.

At one point, Bissell talks to a young Karakalpak man who had been to England. This man remarked that his experience changed everything. "I saw a situation, my own country, that I thought I knew very well, from another point of view. It was like looking into a bottle when you have spent your life seeing it only from the side."
Bissell comments that he then lied and said he knew exactly what the man meant. He lied because he did not like travel, and he admits that he does not see things from another point of view. This is why I have to confess to some ambivalence of my own. For me, Bissell's overarching ambivalence---of going to a place you don't like, to write about things that turn you off, and having experiences that you'd rather not have, missing your comforts, not empathizing with most people---and still doing it---is the downside of this book. An interesting picture of Uzbekistan in modern times, a detailed portrait of a country still finding its way in the community of nations, a country much under the thumb of a dictator--this is the positive side of CHASING THE SEA. So, is it a good book ? You be the judge. I've just set up what I think are the contradictions here. I'm ambivalent.

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A good book, not great, not terrible

This book has sure stirred up a bit of acrimony, based on the other reviews here on amazon.com. No doubt, there are many personal agendas behind both the fiercely positive and fiercely negative reviews. I have no agenda.

To be brief, this was an enjoyable read if you are simply looking for a travel book about Central Asia. I would agree that the title is not the most appropriate as the Aral Sea does seem to take a back seat to other areas of Uzbekistan. And that's okay, if you know going into the read that you are going to get a travelogue and not a scientific treatise.

Mr. Bissell is an interesting writer, but at this point seems to lack a bit of maturity. I am not sure why he felt he needed to slam Robert Kaplan in his book. And I could sure do without all the "dudes" and "bros" and the frat boy references to women. I've no doubt that in twenty years he will look back at some of what he wrote with a bit of maturity and embarrassment himself.

(As an aside, I was a bit disturbed to know that the former Peace Corp Volunteer, Jerod, taught his interpreter to refer to women as bitches!)

That said, read the book. It is going cheap in the used section.

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