viii, 325 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, map ; 24 cm Originally published: Sydney : Picador, 2011.The Great Race -- Signs of wonder -- The listening post -- The moon and the mail -- The Angels' Sanctuary -- City of sands -- Tricks and trust -- Key to the cave -- The hidden gem -- The thieves' road -- Affliction in the orchard -- Frozen -- Yesterday, having drunk too much -- Stormy debut -- Treasure hunters -- Hangman's Hill -- Facets of a jewel -- Shifting sands -- Scroll forward.The Silk Road once linked China with the Mediterranean. It conveyed merchants, pilgrims and ideas; but its cultures and oases were swallowed by shifting sands. Central to the Silk Road's rediscovery was a man named Aurel Stein, a Hungarian-born scholar and archaeologist employed by the British service. When a Chinese monk broke into a hidden cave in 1900 and uncovered scrolls undisturbed for a thousand years, Stein secured the scrolls, the Diamond Sutra of AD 868. This is the story of the scrolls, and their journey to London. 

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