All the roads are open : an Afghan journey, 1939-1940 / Annemarie Schwarzenbach ; translated and introduced by Isabel Fargo Cole ; with an afterword by Roger Perret.

Translated from the German.

Abstract: "In June 1939, Annemarie Schwarzenbach and fellow writer Ella Maillart set out from Geneva in a Ford, heading for Afghanistan. This first women to travel Afghanistan's Northern Road, they fled the storm brewing in Europe to seek a place untouched by what they considered to be Western neuroses. The Afghan journey documented in [the book] is one of the most important episodes of Schwarzenbach's turbulent life. Her incisive, lyrical essays offer a unique glimpse of an Aghanistan already touched by the 'fateful laws knows as progress', a remote yet 'sensitive nerve centre of world politics' caught amid great powers in upheaval. In her writings, Schwarzenbach conjures up the desolate beauty of landscapes both internal and external, reflecting on the longings and loneliness of travel as well as its grace. Maillart's account of their trip, The Cruel Way, stands as a classic of travel literature, and now available for the first time in English, Schwarzenbach's memoir rounds out the story of the adventure"—back cover.

Contents: Balkan borders—Therapia—Trebizond : farewell to the sea—Mount Ararat—The steppe—The prisoners—No man's land : between Persia and Afghanistan—Herat, 1 August 1939—The Hindu Kush three times—In the garden of the beautiful girls of Qaisar—The women of Kabul—The neighbouring village—The bank of the Oxus—The potters of Istalif—The trip to Ghazni—Two women alone in Afghanistan—Chehel Sotun—Onward to Peshawar—Aden, a morning vision—The trip down the Suez Canal – Afterword : 'My existence in the exile of distant adventure.'

English