Current Literature
HUNTED THROUGH CENTRAL ASIA By P. S. Nazaroff We start with the "author awaiting execution—a grimly exciting prelude—for his anti-Bolshevik sympathies : but his real political work did not start till he was in prison, whence and on his release he took a prominent part in the abortive Tashkend rising of 1918. Its failure drove him to take refuge among the nomads of Turkestan, the Salts and the Kirghiz, who were (and probably still are) completely out of sympathy with the Communist regime. This book, Hunted Through Central Asia (Blackwood, 7s. 6d.), describes the shifts to which he was driven in avoiding the agents of the Che-Ka, and which carried him as far afield as the Tien Shan mountains and Tibet. His early training as a mining engineer enabled him to deceive the illiterate agents of the Bolsheviks who were for a time persuaded that he was engaged on a scientific mission organized from Moscow, but (as he says) his escape was nothing short of a miracle. The narrative is extremely exciting and vivid, but in addition to it all Mr. Nazaroff is a sportsman and an ardent lover of nature. So there is much more to the book than a mere recital of personal adventure. In the midst of his perils he is able to notice that " in some places there are sweet-smelling white tulips on long stems. Also two very interesting kinds of Arum : one, Arum korolkovi, has green flowers with a yellow pistil . . . the other, Eminium lehmanni, is of a very unusual colour." Could detachment go further ? In his scientific zeal and delight in nature, despite the hazards of his environment, he resembles that great man Emin Pasha. This is a very readable book.
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