A Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar

It is 1923 and Evangeline English, keen lady cyclist, arrives with her sister Lizzie at the ancient Silk Route city of Kashgar to help establish a Christian mission. Lizzie is in thrall to their forceful and unyielding leader Millicent, but Eva's motivations for leaving her bourgeois life back at home are less clear-cut. As they attempt to navigate their new home and are met with resistance and calamity, Eva commences work on her book, A Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar... In present-day London another story is beginning. Frieda, a young woman adrift in her own life, opens her front door one night to find a man sleeping on the landing. In the morning he is gone, leaving on the wall an exquisite drawing of a long-tailed bird and a line of Arabic script. Tayeb, who has fled to England from Yemen, has arrived on Frieda's doorstep just as she learns that she is the next-of-kin to a dead woman she has never heard of: a woman whose abandoned flat contains many surprises - among them an ill-tempered owl. The two wanderers begin an unlikely friendship as their worlds collide, and they embark on a journey that is as great, and as unexpected, as Eva's. A stunning debut peopled by unforgettable characters, A Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar is an extraordinary story of inheritance and the search for belonging in a fractured and globalised world.

About the Author :
Suzanne Joinson works in the literature department of the British Council, and regularly travels widely across the Middle East, North Africa, China and Europe. In 2007 she won the New Writing Ventures Award for Creative Non-Fiction for 'Laila Ahmed'. She is studying for a PhD in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths, University of London, and lives by the sea on the South Coast of England. www.suzannejoinson.com @suzyjoinson

Review :
A haunting, original and beautifully written tale that conveys a sense of profound alienation, and of other realities A heartfelt story about adventurous women and a fascinating history of life in a remote corner of the Silk Road in the early twentieth century; utterly beguiling An astonishing epic - colonial-era travel combined with a modern meditation on where we belong and how we connect in the world - I could not put it down Eccentric and full of twists and surprises and in the end very touching. Above all bold and different and extremely readable Richly imaginative and daring in the way it weaves together time-scapes and landscapes A wonderfully evocative, fresh and impressive debut. I admired its scope and its unexpectedness Suzanne Joinson's first novel is a finely-worked and captivating read. She combines her own wealth of travel experiences with vivid characters from past and present, resulting in a delicate yet richly-layered story. Delicious Thrilling and densely plotted ... An impressive debut, its prose as lucid and deep as a mountain lake. Joinson also has a gift for evoking finely calibrated shifts of feeling... Joinson explores notions of freedom, rootlessness, dislocation - any writer's reliable arsenal. But she makes these themes her own There's a brilliant sense of place in this original debut Beautifully written in language too taut, piercing, and smartly observed to be called lyrical, this atmospheric first novel immediately engages, nicely reminding us that odd twists of fate sometimes aren't that odd. Highly recommended An affecting tale of inheritance and belonging [An] old and elegant first novel ... Joinson's depiction of the continuing cultural, sexual and spiritual conflicts between East and West is provocative and powerful. The present is as richly depicted as the past, with Frieda's professional life and family background as significant as Evangeline's. An ambitious, accomplished debut The title of Suzanne Joinson's first novel promises much and delivers ... Joinson's characterisation is finely drawn and brings Kashgar vividly to life - it's a debut novel of note Joinson possesses a touching, joyful quality that somehow suits the fragile, elusive nature of her characters Two stories are told in Suzanne Joinson's complex, luminous debut about unconventional women ... With great delicacy, Joinson conveys wonder and horror, both past and present, as the scraps of stories from this cast of wanderers build into an enthralling tale, packed with vivid impressions and full of surprises Brilliantly descriptive, this is a book to delight in and savour A first book by a young Englishwoman impressed me. Suzanne Joinson’s A Lady Cyclist’s Guide to Kashgar consists of two parallel stories, each told from the point of view of a childless female protagonist, one at a shimmering, multi-ethnic Silk Road trading post, the other in contemporary London This is a sprightly, engaging and lovingly written book I was blown away by this debut. It's amazing. Clever, exotic, compulsive, intensely moving An ambitious debut ... With intriguing characters and exotic locations, A Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar is a compelling and likeable tale ... not only a smartly paced adventure story but also a careful meditation on the myriad ways in which loving, and failing, our children are often tragically and inextricably linked Impressive ... This parallel use of the emigrant/immigrant experience is enlightening an full of dramatic potential ... a novel that very effectively draws you in ... a subtle and pleasing story Joinson balances these parallel stories with impressive skill. In an alternating-chapter narrative, there's always a temptation to skip through one story in favour of the other. Here, both are equally absorbing ... a strikingly original first novel, and a total page-turner. In fact, it has the look of a slow-burn, word-of-mouth favourite The opening of this book is nothing if not dramatic! ... With a gripping narrative and two powerful stories, Joinson creates a novel with considerable impact. **** An absolute surefire winner for any bookish bicyclist Joinson’s debut switches effectively between the exoticism ... and the bleakness ... Her prose is clear and her tale not without humour, although the historical narrative would have sufficed on its own