Author Description

The story of Pavel Nazaroff reads more like something out of a spy thriller than one man's true story. Nazaroff, the ringleader of a plot to overthrow Bolshevik rule in Central Asia in 1918, was betrayed to the dreaded Cheka, or Bolshevik secret police, who quickly condemned him to death as "a known enemy of the proletariat." Just before his execution, however, a White Russian uprising stormed the prison in Tashkent where Nazaroff was held and in the confusion he escaped. And so began what he was later to describe as "a long and distant odyssey which would take me right across Central Asia, to the mysterious land of Tibet, and over the Himalayas to the plains of Hindustan."On his journey we was aided by the Kirghiz and the Sarts, Moslem peoples who also detested the Bolsheviks. At one point, Nazaroff was walled up in a Sart's dwelling for his own protection, and for many months he lived "the life of a hunted animal." As the months passed, Nazaroff realized that his counter-revolutionary cause was a hopeless one, and that his only recourse was to flee across the world's tallest mountain range into China. The final stage of his adventure, in which he must evade both the pursuing Cheka and the Chinese border guards, will keep readers on the very edges of their seats.Hunted Through Central Asia also offers a fascinating introduction to the life and times of Nazaroff by Peter Hopkirk, as well as an Epilogue in which Hopkirk includes details of the counter-revolutionary's life after his dramatic escape from the Cheka. Anyone who enjoys a good spy novel will be thrilled by this true story of espionage and international intrigue.