Susan Whitfield (1) (1960–)

This book explores Life Along the Silk Road through imagined biographies of various different people—a sea-going merchant, a Buddhist nun, a soldier, a princess and more—who lived between roughly the 7th and 10th centuries. Susan Whitfield fleshes out what we can securely know about them, which is generally very little, with contextualising information drawn from documentary and archaeological sources in order to create short biographies that tell us something about a particular moment in history. I can see what Whitfield was going for with this approach, in trying to produce something which might engage students more by centering characters rather than more traditional textbook approaches. I'm not sure that the book doesn't fall a bit between two stools as a result, because these are much more potted biographies rather than true narratives. Students may not be gripped, but it should at least be a fairly painless reading experience.… (more)