Published Books

Josanne La Valley The Vine Basket tells of a Uyghur girl’s struggle in a land dominated by the Chinese communist regime. When fourteen-year-old Mehrigul’s brother leaves home she must give up school to help on the family farm. That makes her a prime candidate to be sent to work in a Chinese factory. She alone knows…

Edgar Knobloch In this comprehensive account of the culture and history of Central Asia, Edgar Knobloch describes the main centers of the age-old civilization. Throughout the book he spices the text with quotations from the works of contemporary travelers, while providing an expert’s commentary on the archaeological, architectural, and decorative features of the sites he…

Ella K. Maillart Ella Maillart was the adventurous Swiss woman who made her name as an intrepid explorer and one of the most remarkable woman travelers of the early twentieth century. An amazing sports woman, she first represented her country as the only woman competitor at the 1924 Paris Olympics in the single-handed boat-sailing contest,…

David Eimer In 1949, Mao Zedong announced the birth of the People’s Republic of China, a proclamation to the world that, after centuries of war and social conflict, China had emerged as one nation. Since then, this idea has been propagated by broadcasts of marches and mass demonstrations of unity, designed for the benefit of…

Najeeb ElKilany “I don’t mind, but I want to listen to the story from the beginning,” I said while he was taking the cups from a young boy, perhaps his grandson. He said, “The story is a long tragedy. Pilgrims come every year to Makkah for performing the rituals of Hajj and then, they get…

Rian Thum For 250 years, the Turkic Muslims of Altishahr—the vast desert region to the northwest of Tibet—have led an uneasy existence under Chinese rule. Today they call themselves Uyghurs, and they have cultivated a sense of history and identity that challenges Beijing’s official national narrative. Rian Thum argues that the roots of this history…

Edgar Knobloch A fully up-to-date exploration of the jewels of Central Asian archaeology, art, and architecture, incorporating all the very latest archaeological discoveries This comprehensive account of the culture and history of Central Asia describes the main centers of human civilization. Turkestan—the great landmass of Central Asia and Western China—is an intriguing meeting point of…

Colin Legerton, Jacob Rawson Traveling more than 14,000 miles by bus and train to the farthest reaches of China, the authors of this narrative explore the minority peoples who dwell there, talking to farmers in their fields, monks in their monasteries, fishermen on their skiffs, and herders on the steppe. Closely observing daily life in these remote…

Dragon Fighter: One Woman’s Epic Struggle for Peace with China Rebiya Kadeer, Alexandra Cavelius, His Holiness The Dalai Lama Along the Silk Road, where Europe, Asia and Russia converge, stands the four thousand-year-old land of a peaceful people, the Uyghurs. Their culture is filled with music, dance, family and love of tradition passed down by…

John D Halsted The Uyghur people have origins that are as ancient as the Han Chinese, if not older. Originating in central China, they were slowly pushed further west until they settled in the Tarim Basin. But the Uyghurs are not just limited to East Turkestan and can also be found inhabiting the Central Asian…

Nick Holdstock ‘There is still much that is unclear about what actually happened during that violent week in July 2009. But however terrible its cost whether it was a massacre of peaceful protestors, an orchestrated episode of violence, or something in between it was not without precedent.’ NICK HOLDSTOCK In 1997 a small town in…

Stuart Stevens The first account of travel in Chinese Turkistan, closed to foreigners since 1949, shows a world where bureaucratic hazards often loom larger than geographical ones. “Stevens, a freelance journalist, filmmaker and political consultant, retraces explorer and author Peter Fleming’s legendary 1935 journey through Chinese Turkistan from capital Beijing to remote, unpopulated Kashgar. Stevens…

Johannes Kalter Discusses the clothing, jewelry, carpets, and other decorative arts of the people of the Turkestan region and describes the people’s way of life. “I acquired my first copy many years ago, and have worn it out by constant use. It awakened my appreciation of the richness and variety of ethnic arts in Turkestan.…

Eric Enno Tamm On July 6, 1906, Baron Gustaf Mannerheim boarded the midnight train from St. Petersburg, charged by Czar Nicholas II to secretly collect intelligence on the Qing Dynasty’s sweeping reforms that were radically transforming China. The last czarist agent in the so-called Great Game, Mannerheim chronicled almost every facet of China’s modernization, from…

Ethan Gutmann The inside story of China’s organ transplant business and its macabre connection with internment camps and killing fields for arrested dissidents, especially the adherents of Falun Gong. Mass murder is alive and well. That is the stark conclusion of this comprehensive investigation into the Chinese state’s secret program to get rid of political dissidents…

Gardner Bovingdon For more than half a century many Uyghurs, members of a Muslim minority in northwestern China, have sought to achieve greater autonomy or outright independence. Yet the Chinese government has consistently resisted these efforts, countering with repression and a sophisticated strategy of state-sanctioned propaganda emphasizing interethnic harmony and Chinese nationalism. After decades of…

USA Naval Postgraduate School Seek to answer the question of how the Chinese government’s policies towards the Uyghurs, a Turkic Muslim group living predominantly in the northwestern Chinese province Xinjiang (East Turkistan), have influenced the political consolidation of the Uyghurs. Three aspects of this question will be explored: Uyghur identity, interests, and Islamic mobilization. First, have Chinese…

Christian Tyler Known by the Chinese as a barbarian land, its rich past conjures up sand-buried cities and painted caves, while its present is punctuated by violence and warfare. And now it is returning to the light. The picture it presents is both fascinating and disturbing. The Uighurs, still farm the tranquil oases that ring…

‘As someone who has extensively travelled in the region for 15 years, Holdstock’s book gives us a rare glimpse into the land and its people, and how the policies of the Chinese state have led to an extreme sense of alienation among the Uighurs, with some of them turning to radical steps and violence.’ (Gulf…

This work on the Uyghurs, a 10-million strong Turkic Muslim minority residing mainly in Xinjiang (East Turkistan) in western China, is a welcome contribution to a recent rise in Uyghur studies…A remarkable account of a people searching for identity at the intersection of empire. (M. Chakars Choice) Nothing I have read in the last fifteen years comes close…

Blaine Kaltman The Turkic Muslims from Central Asia known as the Uighur have long faced social and economic disadvantages in China due to their minority status. Under the Heel of the Dragon: Islam, Racism, Crime, and the Uighur in China offers a unique insight into current conflicts resulting from the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and the Chinese…

Jay Dautcher The Uyghurs, a Turkic group, account for half the population of the Xinjiang (East Turkistan) region in northwestern China. This ethnography presents a thick description of life in the Uyghur suburbs of Yining, a city near the border with Kazakhstan, and situates that account in a broader examination of Uyghur culture. Its four sections explore…