Reviews

In June of 313 C.E., while languishing on China’s northwest frontier some 2,000 miles east of his native Samarkand, a merchant named Nanai-vandak wrote a poignant letter to his business associates back home: A severe famine in the Chinese capital, Luoyang, had led to the death of some of his compatriots. Fearing that he too might perish, Nanai-vandak asked his friends to invest his savings on behalf of his “orphan” son back home. Sadly, this letter never reached its destination. In 1907 the British archaeological explorer Aurel Stein found it with several other letters near Dunhuang, a guard post […]