Review
The story opens just outside Kashgar, (Western China) in 1923. The opening is toe-curlingly painful to read as an eleven year old girl, clearly too young to give birth, dies in labour. Throughout A Lady Cyclist’s Guide to Kashgar, Joinson does not shy away from the gruesome. Everything from abortion in the 1920s’, to Tayeb’s experiences as an illegal immigrant from Yemen, to the (nauseating) extremities that people in cults will go to to obtain ‘enlightenment’ are examined. Read the rest of this entry »
