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A Sunday Times Best History Book of the Year
A Spectator Book of the Year
‘A book of beauty and beguiling rhythm that offers unsettling lessons about our present-day world of borders’ The Times
‘Thoughtful, lyrical yet ambitiously panoramic . . . an important, generous and beautifully-written book’ William Dalrymple
The ground-breaking story of Nomadic peoples on the move across history.
Humans have been on the move for most of history. Even after the great urban advancement lured people into the great cities of Uruk, Babylon, Rome and Chang’an, most of us continued to live lightly on the move and outside the pages of history. But recent discoveries have revealed another story . . .
Wandering people built the first great stone monuments, such as the one at Göbekli Tepe, seven thousand years before the pyramids. They tamed the horse, fashioned the composite bow, fought with the Greeks and hastened the end of the Roman Empire. They had a love of poetry and storytelling, a fascination for artistry and science, and a respect for the natural world rooted in reliance and their belief. Embracing multiculturalism, tolerant of other religions, their need for free movement and open markets brought a glorious cultural flourishing to Eurasia, enabling the Renaissance and changing the human story.
Reconnecting with our deepest mythology, our unrecorded antiquity and our natural environment, Nomads is the untold history of civilisation, told through its outsiders.
A Spectator Book of the Year
‘A book of beauty and beguiling rhythm that offers unsettling lessons about our present-day world of borders’ The Times
‘Thoughtful, lyrical yet ambitiously panoramic . . . an important, generous and beautifully-written book’ William Dalrymple
The ground-breaking story of Nomadic peoples on the move across history.
Humans have been on the move for most of history. Even after the great urban advancement lured people into the great cities of Uruk, Babylon, Rome and Chang’an, most of us continued to live lightly on the move and outside the pages of history. But recent discoveries have revealed another story . . .
Wandering people built the first great stone monuments, such as the one at Göbekli Tepe, seven thousand years before the pyramids. They tamed the horse, fashioned the composite bow, fought with the Greeks and hastened the end of the Roman Empire. They had a love of poetry and storytelling, a fascination for artistry and science, and a respect for the natural world rooted in reliance and their belief. Embracing multiculturalism, tolerant of other religions, their need for free movement and open markets brought a glorious cultural flourishing to Eurasia, enabling the Renaissance and changing the human story.
Reconnecting with our deepest mythology, our unrecorded antiquity and our natural environment, Nomads is the untold history of civilisation, told through its outsiders.
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Reviews
Nomads is a monumental work, exhaustively researched that sets out to explain nomadism, its importance, rise and decline over the centuries in the minutest detail
Nomads is a kind of rhapsody on how this aspect of human nature has contributed as much, if not more, to civilization, than the tillers of the soil
A fabulous piece of evocative writing, mixing personal stories with an epic sweep of history, the unique insight of location and an intimate connection to the subject. I loved it
A terrific storyteller
An incredible work combining brilliant scholarship with an epic, page-turning narrative . . . His landmark book
Anthony Sattin's Nomads spreads before us a sweeping panorama of nomadism
that resonates through the past and echoes poignantly even in the present
Exceptional . . . tender and beautifully written
I was riveted by the shifts to nomadic culture, Sapiens-like, and by the feeling of learning lightly worn and deftly transmitted. This is a major book
I was riveted by the shifts to nomadic culture, Sapiens-like, and by the feeling of learning lightly worn and deftly transmitted. This is a major book
In a book of sensitivity and grace, Sattin does not just describe the nomadic way of life, but also evokes it . . . This is a book of beauty and beguiling rhythm that offers unsettling lessons about our present-day world of borders
Sweeping . . . Poetic . . . Sattin brings together a huge range of material with great elegance, making it not only readable but also vital
The saga of the lost mobile cultures and empires that have impacted global history . . . a spirited defence of freedom of conscience, freedom of movement and migration, a romantic tribute to independence and to free spirit, and to being in tune with the rhythms of nature
Thoughtful, lyrical yet ambitiously panoramic . . . As fleet and light-footed as its subject, it takes us along a dizzying path, over many of the highest ridges of human history . . . An important, generous and beautifully-written book
Triumphantly tells the story of another way of living . . . This is a book that does not labour in the fields but gallops full stretch towards the horizon
A much-needed act of historical revisionism
An unashamedly impressionistic paean to nomadic life interwoven with travelogue and memoir