All roads used to lead to Rome. Today they lead to Beijing. So argues Peter Frankopan in this revelatory new book.

In the age of Brexit and Trump, the West is buffeted by the tides of isolationism and fragmentation. Yet to the East, this is a moment of optimism as a new network of relationships takes shape along the ancient trade routes. In The New Silk Roads, Peter Frankopan takes us on an eye-opening journey through the region, from China's breathtaking infrastructure investments to the flood of trade deals among Central Asian republics to the growing rapprochement between Turkey and Russia. This important book asks us to put aside our preconceptions and see the world from a new--and ultimately hopeful--perspective.

Peter Frankopan is Professor of Global History at Oxford University, where he is Senior Research Fellow at Worcester College, Oxford and Stavros Niarchos Foundation Director of the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research. He is Associate Director of the Program for Silk Roads Studies at King's College, Cambridge.

He works on the history of the Mediterranean, Russia, the Middle East, Persia/Iran, Central Asia, China and beyond.

Peter often writes for the international press, including The New York Times, Financial Times Guardian, and has a regular column in the London Evening Standard.

Peter has been described in The New Statesman as 'the history rock star du jour', and a rock-star historian (VLT - Sweden). He was named One of the World's 50 Top Thinkers by Prospect Magazine in 2019. He is a 'literary star', says The Times.

Silk Roads was named The Daily Telegraph's History Book of the Year 2015. it went to Number One in the Sunday Times Non-Fiction charts, remaining in the Top 10 for nine months in a row, as well as being #1 in China, India and many other countries around the world, selling more than 1.5m copies. It is one of 'ten books that change how you see the world' (The Times). It was named one of the 'Books of the Decade' 2010-20 by the Sunday Times.

His follow-up, The New Silk Roads, is a 'masterly-mapping out of anew world order', according to the Evening Standard, and 'a brilliant guide to terra incognita' (Sunday Times) that is reminiscent of Tolstoy (Daily Telegraph). It won the Human Sciences prize of the Carical Foundation in 2019

In December 2018, The Silk Roads was named one of the 25 most influential books translated into Chinese in the last 40 years, alongside One Hundred Years of Solitude, Pride and Prejudice, Catcher in the Rye and The Great Gatsby. In 2019, he won the prestigious Calliope Prize of the German Emigration Center, one of the richest prizes for the Humanities in Germany.

In 2016-18, Peter's Songlines audio channel in which he chose his favorite pieces of world music was part of British Airways' In-Flight Entertainment system. In 2018, The Silk Roads was chosen as part of the Government of Pakistan's Read to Lead program to encourage literacy in the country. It was the inspiration for a new character in The Vikings mini-series.

Source: peterfrankopan.com