Chasing the Sea: Lost Among the Ghosts of Empire in Central Asia

by Tom Bissell

In 1996, Tom Bissell went to Uzbekistan as a naive Peace Corps volunteer. Though he lasted only a few months before illness and personal crisis forced him home, Bissell found himself entranced by this remote land. Five years later he returned to explore the shrinking Aral Sea, destroyed by Soviet irrigation policies. Joining up with an exuberant translator named Rustam, Bissell slips more than once through the clutches of the Uzbek police as he makes his often wild way to the devastated sea.

In Chasing the Sea, Bissell combines the story of his travels with a beguiling chronicle of Uzbekistan’s striking culture and long history of violent subjugation by despots from Jenghiz Khan to Joseph Stalin. Alternately amusing and sobering, this is a gripping portrait of a fascinating place, and the debut of a singularly gifted young writer.

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction, History, Asia, Memoir, Biography, Russia

388 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Tom Bissell (born 1974) is a journalist, critic, and fiction writer.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Reviews

[W · Rating 5 out of 5]

Uzbekistan was one of the fifteen republics,which comprised the former Soviet Union.Also,it is one of the five "stans" of largely Muslim Central Asia.

The culture is a curious mix of Russian influence and Muslim orthodoxy.Tom Bissell,a young Peace Corps volunteer,went to the country in 1996.He didn't last too long,but his experiences during that trip make for interesting and hilarious reading.

Some years later,he returned.This time,his objective was to investigate the unfolding environmental disaster due to the drying of the Aral Sea.

Uzbekistan is a very tightly governed state,even more so during those days,under the iron fist of late President Islam Karimov.

Accompanied by a local translator,Rustam,the author has a series of adventures and misadventures in Uzbekistan.It is a hilarious book,though it has a serious side as well,as it looks at Uzbekistan's history as well as the reasons for the environmental disaster of the Aral Sea.

It's been many years since I read it,so I can't do a detailed review.But I enjoyed it enormously,all the more so,because of my visit to Uzbekistan's capital,Tashkent and that fabled city,Samarkand.

The book will be of particular interest to people familiar with the ex Soviet republics of Central Asia.

[Buck · Rating 3 out of 5]

Now that more and more writers in my age bracket are getting published, I’ve noticed something unsettling: reading their books is a bit like listening to my own voice on tape and has the same cringe-inducing effect. I realize every generation has its own jargon, its in-jokes and iPod playlists, but experiencing it from the inside is different. And demoralizing. It makes you appreciate how hard it is to rise above the idle chatter and say something halfway original.

At any rate, Chasing the Sea struck me as just the sort of book I might have written if I’d spent a few months bumming around Uzbekistan—and if I were, you know, a little brighter and more enterprising. As a person, Tom Bissell is probably nothing like me, but various little signs and shibboleths give away his age. He’s definitely one of us.

Take his sense of humour. I’m not sure how to categorize it exactly, but I know it when I hear it, if only because of the Pavlovian regularity with which it cracks me up. Much of the comedy in the book is provided by Rustam, the MILF-chasing Uzbek slacker who serves as Bissell’s interpreter. The exchanges between the two, full of comic misunderstandings and crude affection, have this loopy, laid-back, THC-infused quality:

“We need to go somewhere soon, bro, because my pee bubble is full.”
“Your pee bubble?”
“This is the bubble which holds my pee.”
“Your bladder, you mean. Bladder. B-l-a-d-d-e-r.”
“In English you don’t call it the pee bubble?”
“I will from now on, probably.”

And later:

“Ferghana is safe, bro. I don’t want you to worry.”
“I’m not worried.”
“The only thing you have to worry about is the Wahhabi rebels in the mountains. And then only during Rebel Season.”
“Rebel Season.”
“Yeah. When the snow melts. They move around.”
“When exactly is Rebel Season?”
“Well, I guess now.”


For me—and maybe only for me—the interesting thing about travel writing is that, while technically non-fiction, it’s hedged with as many codes and conventions as the novel. Among other challenges, the writer is faced with the delicate task of creating a narratorial voice, of constructing a persona. The trick is to be sympathetic without appearing to curry favour with the reader. The classic British travel writers—whom Bissell has obviously read with care—solved this problem in classic British fashion: through irony, understatement, self-depreciation. Bissell adopts an up-to-date, American version of this strategy, presenting himself as a bumbling but well-meaning doofus whose courage keeps deserting him at critical moments (thus, having agreed to smuggle some cash to the wife of an imprisoned Uzbek journalist, he gets so freaked out by the superintendent of the woman’s apartment building that he falls all over himself trying to run away—something it’s very hard to imagine Sir Wilfred Thesiger ever doing.)

Even if it is just a conventional pose, Bissell’s innocent-abroad routine seems very credible to me, mostly because I can relate all too well to his habit of losing his shit in spectacular ways. All the same, it’s kind of a sad commentary on 21st century manhood that we’ve gone from aristocratic sangfroid (“Being tortured by Papuan cannibals is rather a bore”) to our present state of gushy enfeeblement (Bissell has a recurring joke about how his decision to quit the Peace Corps back in the 90s was ‘emotional and complicated’—basically he missed his girlfriend and went crazy). What the fuck has happened to us?

Structurally, Chasing the Sea is—excuse the pun—a little choppy. Every time Bissell gets to a new town, he calls a halt to the narrative and piles on the scholarly in-fill, giving you a potted history of the place from medieval times to the present. And he can’t so much as glance at a minaret without writing two pages of expert commentary on its lovely neo-Byzantine ribbing or whatever. Unless you have a truly perverse passion for Central Asian history and architecture, you’re going to find all this expository stuffing very lumpy.

But read it anyway. Even if you’re not lucky enough to belong to my fabulous cohort—heck, even if you’re one of those insufferable baby boomers—you’re bound to get something out of it. It’s a sad, funny, (extremely) informative book. Just skim the minaret parts, is my advice.

[Bob Newman · Rating 4 out of 5]

You can go home again....but maybe you shouldn't

Ambivalence is a part of modern life. We can't escape it in the complex modern world. Those who want to live without ambivalence may wind up in some kind of fundamentalist movement that promotes the "only truth". Me, I'm ambivalent about a lot of things. However, sometimes you run across a Mt. Everest of ambivalence, the epitome of having conflicting feelings about something, the man who celebrates Yom Kippur every single day.....God forgive my sins, I am a rotten person. God, save me because I'm not so bad after all. CHASING THE SEA evokes these feelings in me. It's a damn good book in a way, but why do we need to follow the gnashing of the teeth, the midnight soul cringings of one Tom Bissell ? This is a guy who went to Uzbekistan in the Peace Corps, copped out for his own reasons, but couldn't live with them, went back, still didn't much like the place, and wrote a book on his experiences which would definitely get him banned permanently from the country not to mention plunging his Uzbek acquaintances into political difficulties (which could prove fatal in that unlucky land).

He undertook to bring money to the wife of an exile---he failed to do so. He finds much of Uzbek life unpleasant; the persistence of Soviet influence, the secret police, the corruption, the violence, the garbage, the lack of compassion for others, the food, the ugly architecture. He likes comfort, but he doesn't much like the 'Americanization' that occurs when the comfort exists. He didn't like most of the Westerners he met, with a few exceptions. What did he like ? Ah, this is where it gets messy. He liked the fact that he went back and wrote about it, though it seems to me he only stayed five weeks. His trip redeemed himself in his own eyes, but he managed to write a grassroots report from Uzbekistan nonetheless.

His stated aim was to write about the ecological disaster of the Aral Sea. The book has 353 pages, but he only begins to write about it on page 302. Ambivalence yet again---should I really write what I came to write, or shall I not ? Did I really come to do that, or is it only an excuse to pursue my inner demons? He does write. He does it well. The ending is excellent, perhaps the best part of the book, with a more-than-decent ecological message for everyone.

At one point, Bissell talks to a young Karakalpak man who had been to England. This man remarked that his experience changed everything. "I saw a situation, my own country, that I thought I knew very well, from another point of view. It was like looking into a bottle when you have spent your life seeing it only from the side." Bissell comments that he then lied and said he knew exactly what the man meant. He lied because he did not like travel, and he admits that he does not see things from another point of view. This is why I have to confess to some ambivalence of my own. For me, Bissell's overarching ambivalence---of going to a place you don't like, to write about things that turn you off, and having experiences that you'd rather not have, missing your comforts, not empathizing with most people---and still doing it---is the downside of this book. An interesting picture of Uzbekistan in modern times, a detailed portrait of a country still finding its way in the community of nations, a country that was much under the thumb of a dictator--this is the positive side of CHASING THE SEA. So, is it a good book ? You be the judge. I've just set up what I think are the contradictions here. I'm ambivalent.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tom Bissell's Chasing the Sea: Lost Among the Ghosts of Empire in Central Asia is worth buying for the annotated bibliography alone, though it is also one of the best travel books written in the last twenty years. Its subject is a country few Americans know about (let alone know how to pronounce its name). In general Central Asia is one area we Americans know little or nothing about.

The book's "hook" is the sad fate of the Aral Sea, which sits partway in Uzbekistan and partway in Kazakhstan. Over the last half century, it has gone from a major inland sea to a shallow lake surrounded by salt flats and fierce dust storms. Bissell visits the Aral Sea only in the last chapter of the book. Suffice it to say that that short exposure will leave the reader with a gnawing memory of ecological disaster.

In the rest of the book, Bissell writes about his visits to Tashkent, Bokhara, Shakhimardan in the Tien Shan Mountains, Samarkand, and Nukus. There are revealing glimpses of history, from Alexander the Great to Ghenghis Khan to Tamerlane to the modern day. He is also conversant with the work of earlier travelers, which makes his book a good general introduction to the country.

RE-READ NOTES: I still think this is one of the best travel books written in the last 20 years.

[Left Coast Justin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tom Bissell was only twenty-seven? twenty-eight? --when he wrote this, which is pretty astonishing -- his grasp of history over a vast tract of central Asia makes him sound like a professor with a lengthy career behind him, and the writing style is, for the most part, quite mature. But parts of it are also crack-me-up funny. Here is a short snippet of conversation between Bissell and his translator; the translater's a freewheelin' dude even younger than Bissell:

“We need to go somewhere soon, bro, because my pee bubble is full.”
“Your pee bubble?”
“This is the bubble which holds my pee.”
“Your bladder, you mean. Bladder. B-l-a-d-d-e-r.”
“In English you don’t call it the pee bubble?”
“I will from now on, probably.”

...and then a few paragraphs later, upon meeting a young woman he had befriended during an earlier stay:

...Her smile was no longer white. Three-quarters of her teeth were now shiny gold. Many people in Uzbekistan had gold teeth, but women's mouths were the primary showcase of this initially disconcerting dental enhancement. Widespread though usually mild malnutrition and a lack of regular calcium intake meant that, during pregnancy, women's teeth dropped sacrificially from their sockets. Uzbek water additionally lacked the fluoride from which we in America benefited so invisibly. This is strange if only because Uzbek water is laced with so many other periodic-table mainstays.

This latter quote really sum up this book's appeal. Bissell is sympathetic to the plights of others, particularly society's underdogs; he writes clean, lean sentences that carry a lot of information; he is financially literate, scientifically literate and medically literate, which makes him a great narrator for a modern examination of Uzbekistan.

What the book isn't is an in-depth look at the environmental disaster that is the Aral Sea. While he does address that at some length, the emphasis of the book is 'Chasing' rather than 'The Sea'. In fact, most of the book finds him wandering to all of the country's cities of historical interest, most of which are several hours' flight east of the Aral.

There is one aspect of the book that could have been excised, but it was apparently of great importance to Bissell to include it. This was the story of how he first encountered Uzbekistan as a Peace Corps volunteer, and how he went mildly insane and shipped himself back home after only seven months. In fact, the first time I tried to read this I gave up, squirming, at this point in the book. Not all the inner workings of one's mind, and particularly one's twenty-two year old mind, need to be aired out for public review, IMO.

Aside from that, this is an extremely well-researched and well-written account of a part of the world that few of us will ever see.

[V B · Rating 5 out of 5]

I lived in Central Asia for over a year as a Peace Corps volunteer and I feel a kinship with this author. I, like him, didn't know anything about the history of the region before I served there, and didn't make much of an effort to dig deep either. It is only now, ten years later, that I have made an effort, as did the author for his second trip. His research is enlightening, but reading this book did not change my perspective about my experience there. Instead, it felt as if all of my intuitions and vibes about the place were accurate, that although I didn't know the details, I was dead on in my assessment. I both loved the culture and found it mind-boggling at the same time. I felt exhilarated and oppressed, enchanted and repelled, appreciated and mocked, all at the same time, all legitimately. I've gone on too long already, and have been frustratingly vague. Anyway, the book is really important. It is unflinchingly direct and honest and should be read.

[Constance Siobhán · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of those books that I found myself reading to the exclusion of my usual habits. I did not want to put the book down, and I did not want it to end. That this is Bissell's first book is astonishing, and it speaks to just how deeply ingrained his experiences were. It felt to me as if I was traveling with him, feeling the heat, struggling to understand the culture, excited by the quest, daunted by the distance to be covered. But more than that, I also felt the history unfold around me as Bissell recounted it to me. I learned a great deal about the Uzbeks, Central Asia, the Mongols, and the history of Russia's conquests, about leaders (such as Tamerlane) whose awe-inspiring fearsomeness echoes down to the present day, about architecture and wars upon wars, about countless lives spread over ages -- now lost, now re-animated, unforgotten but forever beyond us.

Bissell's story is at once personable and intimate in its portrayal of his journey, and fairly scholarly in its erudition. I found myself recommending it to anyone who at all seemed interested in the world "out there", because Bissell's writing -- his cadence, his word choices -- increases such interest, resonates with that sense of fascination, amplifies the ideas engendered by what he shares.

The Aral Sea is a backdrop for most of the story, but it is not until the final pages of the book that we reach the rapidly receding shore of the greatest ecological disaster of our age. What is amazing is how reaching this terminal point makes the rest of the book fall into place, creating a configuration that is, quite simply put, stunning. The question raised calls out like a ship's plaintive horn across the waterless waste: What hath man wrought? It is a question the answer to which is unsettling to the heart. But Bissell managed to bring me to that deserted shore, to walk among the dessicated ships stranded there, to be a witness to the outrage there perpetrated against the world, without ever preaching at me or trying to sell me anything. In the end, I felt as if I'd been quietly guided there to see for myself, and my reaction to it was echoed in Bissell's own reaction; our humanity was there in common.

[Jim Coughenour · Rating 4 out of 5]

A few years ago I read Tom Bissell's book of short stories – God Lives in St. Petersburg – and greatly enjoyed its ultra-dark comedy, but it didn't prepare me for Chasing the Sea, Bissell's account of his 2001 journey through Uzbekistan in the company of Rustam, his handsome, hip and silently desperate translator. Bissell's ostensible reason for his visit was to document the apocalyptic deterioration of the Aral Sea, but in fact it seems to be a private pilgrimage, an exorcism of past failure (he'd had a breakdown in Uzbekistan as a Peace Corps volunteer in the mid-90s).

Yet the book is much more than that – part political reflection, part polemic (against "Ends of the Earth" writers like Robert Kaplan), part picaresque adventures in Central Asia – and ultimately, a ghastly tale of political and ecological disaster and the people who endure it. The book takes a deeply dispiriting turn at the end, as Bissell finally reaches the desert wasteland of what used to be the world's fourth largest inland body of water – and leaves his faithful readers stranded like ships on the sand.

Bissell's writing is never less than beguiling, even though his book is (at times) almost unbearably sad. The annotated bibliography at the end is a bonus, prompting me to hunt down my next armchair expedition – F. W. Bailey's Mission to Tashkent.

[Tiffany · Rating 3 out of 5]

I remember being really impressed with his article about the Aral in Harper's many years back but anyone hoping for a deeper look at that particular crisis will be disappointed. He barely reaches the Aral and is more interested in telling the rest of the Central Asian story.

Which is ok. I applaud him for writing a book about this forgotten part of the world. But having read several of his books now, I have to say there's something off about his gender relations. It's hard to put my finger on it but it's partially the way he hypes up his own dude-bro credentials (also seen in Extra Lives Matter) and partially the way he doesn't seem to relate any real peer-to-peer relationships with women the way he does with men (a few women are mentioned in a cursory way and/or dismissed as a type). Maybe if I reread it I could analyze exactly what the problem is, but I don't want to reread it.

Update: I DID reread it, after I traveled to Uzbekistan, and I enjoyed it more the second time around because I could relate a bit more to the spaces and places he talks about. However, I still don't like the way he relates to women which is mostly not at all. Lots of dude-bro stuff, a reference I assume the thinks is clever to something being ugly like a "partial birth abortion" (a medical procedure that does not actually exist, although the late term abortions that do exist usually being something that women have to go through with a good deal of mental and some physical pain and suffering), his sometimes subtle and sometimes not so subtle characterization of so many women as victims. It's not a deal breaker because again, your choice on books about this part of the world is limited, but it is annoying.

[Erica · Rating 5 out of 5]

The "Stans" were nothing but a blank space on my mind map of the world before reading this book. Bissell infuses warm and witty, honest travel experiences with stories of the brutal forces that have torn through Uzbekistan over the centuries, the most recent being the cotton industry that continues to destroy the Aral Sea and the people who used to live by its fishing industry. I couldn't help feeling at the end that the Aral Sea, the salty former seabed of which Bissell describes as appearing "microwaved", might be a canary in the mine for poor ole mother earth in general. Great info on the aftermath of USSR collapse, too. And funny.

[Gina · Rating 3 out of 5]

In some respects, the author's descriptions of life in Uzbekistan are identical to my own experiences in Kyrgyzstan and travels in Uzbekistan. But in other respects, Kyrgyz culture and history and post-Soviet government are so different from Uzbekistan's. And I'm lucky to be in the Peace Corps over 20 years after the author was, for internet access, at least.
I reserve some misgivings about the author's personality; I'm not convinced I'd like him if we met. And I don't love his writing style; he's prone to some overly flowery, maudlin lines and it was hard for me to get into it, with the constant dense historical digressions surrounded by light dialogue and storytelling. I found it was more of an afternoon book than one to read before bed.
Part of the reason it took me so long was just that I had a hardcover version that discouraged me from carrying it anywhere, and I restarted at least once.
But I'm glad I read it.

[Kamili · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes I like to imagine this "Freaky Friday" moment where I become Tom Bissell and he becomes me. It's not that I want to have written this book so much I want to have lived it. Reading his writing (any of it, honestly) is like being cracked over the head with the idea that books are really nowhere near as crazy and as awesome as real life. Can you remember the last time a book did that to you?

[Tim Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

_Chasing the Sea_ is one of the finer travel books I have read in some time. Author Tom Bissell set out originally to cover the tragic disappearance of the Aral Sea, a once large inland body of water shared by Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan that has been slowly choked to death since the 19th century by diversion of the water to grow cotton. Through the course of the book though he not only covers the Aral Sea but also relates his previous personal experiences with Uzbekistan - he served for a time as a Peace Corps volunteer - as well as his current travels. Though he left the Peace Corps, his love for this Central Asian nation didn't leave him and he felt compelled to return, not only to his host family but to the country in general.

We learn that Uzbekistan is the second largest exporter of cotton in the world; though this achievement has not come without considerable cost (also amazingly enough they grow rice too). That this desert nation relies so heavily economically on such a thirsty plant is unusual, but Bissell details how the American Civil War cut off the supply of cotton, encouraging tsarist Russia to look for a new source. Demand for cotton only escalated during the Cold War. To grow the cotton, the Amu Darya River (known in antiquity as the Oxus) was diverted. This river, which forms part of Uzbekistan's southern border and the primary source of the Aral Sea's water, now no longer feeds into it at all. The formerly vast river, which once formed a huge inland delta, is now a mere creek at best as it reaches the receding shores of the Aral.

The Aral Sea's certain demise sometime in the first few decades of the 21st century will have ugly consequences. As late as 1960 the Aral Sea was still the fourth-largest inland body of water in the world; now it is largely salt-crusted, dust-storm swept desert, much of this salt and silt poisonous thanks to decades of Soviet insecticides and dumped toxic waste. Moynaq, once a prosperous seaside community that had 40,000 inhabitants, was a favored beach retreat, and had a cannery that produced 12 to 20 million tins of fish a year; now over a hundred miles from the sea's present (and still receding) shores, it is a near ghost town with no jobs to speak of. Fishing ships lie where they were abandoned, resting incongruously in sand dunes. Now that the Aral Sea has thus far lost over 70% of its water volume it no longer acts to moderate regional temperatures; summers are hotter and winters are colder (possibly ironically dooming the very crops that are being grown at the expense of the sea). The two dozen fish species that were once endemic to the Aral Sea are now extinct (though other species were later reintroduced to the northern Kazakhstan portion). The formerly unique desert forests that surrounded the lake are long gone as well.

More tragic still are those people who live around the Aral Sea. For over 600 years the Karakalpaks, a formerly nomadic people, have called these shores home. Now they are poor and unhealthy, as their industries - fishing, canning, and shipbuilding - have vanished and they suffer soaring rates of infant mortality, tuberculosis, and other diseases directly and indirectly related to the vanished desert sea.

I don't however want to give the impression that this is a grim book, as there are many funny sections in it and Bissell is a talented writer. Nor is the Aral Sea the only subject covered. It is not even the main subject of this travel essay. Most of the book is devoted to Bissell's travels, most of them with a young Uzbek named Rustam, hired as a translator but becoming a friend as he journeyed throughout Uzbekistan, from the T'ien Shan Mountains and Ferghana Valley in the far east of the nation through Tashkent, Samarkand, and Bukhara. Along the way the author relates many interest aspects of Uzbek history and culture, including the days of the Mongols, Timur (known in the West as Tamerlane), the Samanid dynasty of 819-1005 (during which time Uzbekistan became a center of Islamic learning, producing the great doctor ibn Sina, known to Westerners as Avicenna, revered in the West as late as 1700s, and al-Khorezmi, from whose name the word algorithm is derived), the Great Game (the 19th century Cold War of sorts between Russia and the British for supremacy in Central Asia), and the rule of Islam Karimov.

I found his portraits of the various cities the most interesting aspect of the book. Tashkent for example we learn is not only the most populous city in Uzbekistan but the most populous in Central Asia. It is also one of the most modern seeming Central Asian cities, as there is very little architecture older than about 50 years (owing partly to the fact that the city has been Russified since the late 19th century and partly due to a massive 1966 earthquake). Despite is appearances though this oasis city (its name means "Stone City") is over 2000 years old, making it one of the oldest extant cities in the world. For much of its history it was a "sporadically independent city-state" surrounded by a famous high stone wall sixteen miles long (now completely gone) and controlled at times by such various groups as the Arabs, Chinese, Mongols, and the Kazakhs.

Bissell also has many asides in the book about Uzbek culture. He wrote of the very nature of Uzbek, an agreed-upon identity that is less than a century old; that in 1902 a Russian ethnographer noted that there were more 80 clan names in Uzbekistan, more important to them than any "Uzbek" identity. Indeed, Uzbek history in any form only stretches back to the 14th century, when a fierce group of nomadic invaders came down from the plains of southern Siberia.

A good book, just wish it had pictures.

[Cindy]

This one has been on my tbr shelf since 2013, so I finally interlibrary-loaned it for 2 challenges: Cleaning Out the TBR and Read the World. It was very good travel lit for a history buff like me, since he spent a lot of time on the history of Uzbekistan, Central Asia, and the Soviet Union.

[Kayla · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have a lot of quarrels with the author’s problematic perspectives on Uzbek culture and women, especially. I also have some issues with his interview style and approach of interacting only with Anglophone people, but this really can’t be avoided, and I understand!!

I was also drawn into his personal journey, especially how his interactions with Rustam framed a lot of the story.

As I am a CA enthusiast, international development professional, anthropologist, and writer, this book is in my territory of interest… a lot to mull over here and will be thinking about this book for a long time.

[Patrick McCoy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have been a fan of Tom Bissell's writing ever since I came across it in Harper's Magazine. I specifically remember reading a short story set in Central Asia that eventually would be included in his entertaining short story collection God Lives in St. Petersberg and Other Stories. There were other nonfiction pieces as well, starting with the magazine version of what would become a book about his father, who fought in the Vietnam war, and later their trip back to Vietnam: The Father of All Things. And also, the magazine article about the natural disaster that is the Aral Sea that begat this book, Chasing The Sea: Lost Among The Ghost Of Empire In Central Asia (2003). I doubted that I would ever read this book, thinking it would be unlikely that I would develop an interest in Central Asia. Well, since I am returning there for a second visit (the first was five years ago in 2010), to Kyrgyzstan again for a volunteer conference in English language education. I figured that this book would be good background reading for a return visit, and it was. In fact there were some sections that took place in Kyrgyzstan and all countries in the region must be referred to when talking about the history of the region.

This book is one of those books that is hard to describe and pin down, something the Marketing department loved I am sure. It is a personal memoir of Bissell's connection to the region, which began as a largely unsuccessful stint with the Peace Corps where he lost it and quit nine months into stay. He eventually faces up to those memories and faces the reasons why he fled during the Peace Corps, and quite simply-lost his mind. It is also a sort of travelogue that allows him to ruminate on the upheavals that have rocked the region and Uzbekistan throughout the centuries. It is also an act of reportage on Uzbekistan as it was when he was traveling there in the early 2000s. Despite these threads, there is yet another, it is also largely about his down to earth, idiosyncratic, straight talking translator Rustam, who guides him throughout the novel dropping bon mots of wisdom along the way in his American slang-laced vocabulary. Bissell eventually makes his way to the Aral Sea where his reportage on the human devastation of this lake ended up as a Harper's Magazine article and the impetus for this book.That being said this section of the book is a scant 50 pages: it's the journey, not the destination that matters.

I think it is, here first, in this book, that Bissell takes Robert D. Kaplan to task for uninformed reporting in the region and scare-mongering. (I know that I read another article somewhere in which Bissell questions many of Kaplan's conclusion about this region and questions observation made while reporting). I used to be something of a Kaplan devotee, and still thinks he can bring a lot of insight into the regions he visits. But the scare-mongering that has been his calling card has become stale and I lost a lot of respect for him due to his infatuation with Marines when he was embedded with them for his books Imperial Grunts. Need I mention that this book is less than objective. However, getting back to Bissell, there are many memorable descriptions of people, cities, the surroundings, poor driving, bad food, and excellent descriptions and similes that were clever and engaging. Overall, I found this book engaging, entertaining, and informative as well as being a page turner.

[Keith Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maybe I haven't been as grabbed by Bissell's later books, but I still love this one. I think he started an interesting thing with this book, or maybe just pushed something a bit farther -- the mix of memoir and environmental journalism, something that has come much more important in the 15 years since I first wrote about this book:

In 2001 Tom Bissell, who describes himself as an "adventure journalist," was sent to Uzbekistan by Harper's to cover what has been described as the "greatest environmental disaster in the world": the disappearance of the Aral Sea. The book that grew out of that trip, Chasing the Sea: Lost among the Ghosts of Empire in Central Asia, is one of the best American travel narratives since the early work of Peter Matthiessen.

Bissell, who grew up in Escanaba and is not yet thirty, is one of a group of hot young writers who have been evolving a new prose style. On the surface this style evinces an ironic detachment that is often very funny. It also abounds in pop references — to everything from music to brand names — that can easily confuse readers even just a little older who haven't kept up. This popular referentiality is often combined with the grammar and diction of high culture. But beneath all these flourishes — and the real explanation for this new style's success — is a genuine moral sensibility that usually lies outside any of the familiar political categories.

All of this comes together in Chasing the Sea to make a book that is very much in its own category. Bissell includes a lot of history, finding good stories everywhere from before the invasions of Genghis Khan to after the fall of Gorbachev. There is a good deal about Islam in central Asia, and Bissell is very good about differentiating Turkish and Arabic influences. He re-creates several of the interesting characters he encountered in his travels, particularly Rustam, his translator and friend, who comfortably throws around "dude" and "bro" while explaining Uzbeki customs.

And then there is the constant, offstage presence of the Aral Sea, once the fourth-largest lake in the world — larger than Lake Huron — and the home of the most successful fishing fleet in the early Soviet Union. After a century of being diverted to water cotton crops forced to grow in the desert of central Asia, the Aral is only a third of its original size. All of its fish are dead. Sandstorms are more than five times as common, devastating the health of the people who live in the region. Two-thirds of that population suffers from chronic or fatal illness. Chasing the Sea builds to an unforgettable surreal moment near the end where Bissell wanders through sand dunes littered with the hulls of a fishing fleet, abandoned now more than eighty miles from the disappearing sea they once sailed.



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[Ian · Rating 3 out of 5]

I learned much more about Uzbekistan than I had planned, but not as much as I'd hoped about the Aral Sea. Perhaps the reality is that there is not much left to say about this particular environmental catastrophe.

Many reviews are lavishing florid praise on Bissell, but I felt his prose blossoms to be over-perfumed. That's a nice elaborate metaphor, right? Well with Bissell you get about two of those per sentence. This book is an overstuffed bouquet, a pungent vase that I can't find a good place to set down, and doesn't match anything in my house. I.e., it is a little overwritten.

Ultimately, I couldn't handle Bissell's flights of fancy, which float across continents, and honk maddeningly in my ear, like flocks of migrating geese. Bissell can’t walk past an arms-width alley without lapsing into a laborious aside. “Something awful had happened here, and it felt important to me that I pay my respects, however small or meaningless.” It is an ominous line in Bissell, for it grandly presages another of his rhapsodic historical chestnuts. This one begins on page 243 and finally comes back down to earth ten pages later when Tom’s guide, Rustam, reappears. Thank god he came back. The ten pages were something about a murder, but I don't know because I didn’t read the aside, as I had given up on them by this point. I just wanted to get to the Aral Sea.

But as I said, this book isn't really about the Aral Sea. Just when you think he's about to suntan at the former beach in Moynaq, he's whisked to the Ferghana Valley on the extreme eastern (that is, opposite) side of Uzbekistan. Bissell finally gets to Nukus, still 150 miles south of the Aral Sea but at least in Karakalpakistan, on page 302. On page 327 he actually gets in a car to go to Moynaq. After a car ride with an MSF worker through the desert, he finally catches his first glimpse of Moynaq on page 337. Bissell peels some rust off a stranded fishing vessel and then ends the book on page 353.

[Shane McClendon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maybe I'm in the minority, but I kind of liked it when the book went from him getting drunk in a bar to 20 straight pages explaining obscure Uzbek history. I'll confess though, I did get a bit concerned when I was 300 pages into a book about the Aral Sea and he hadn't been to the Aral Sea yet.

[Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of those books in which I had zero interest in the topic--I leave the "--stans" to my husband--but was curious about the writer, who had been highly recommended. What a terrific read this proved to be. It's a road trip in the old-fashioned sense of the word, where the destination seems to be getting further away with every spontaneous funeral, every debauched night, which Bissell tries valiantly to avoid, an impossible mission in a group of Russians. Learned a tremendous amount about Uzbekistan's incredibly bloody history, its dismal present, its gracious people. Especially fine were Bissell's descriptions of the horrid experts and journalists making public fun of people who, for example, continue to nurse tubercular patients for $8.50/month that they don't always get paid.

[David Pratt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good travel journal about the author's 3-week trip to Uzbekistan. It is an interesting travel destination, but life there sounds absolutely dismal. He doesn't get to the Aral Sea, however until 90% of the way into the book. Lots of history and local color. Good for the armchair traveler and history buff.

[Susan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Couldn't get all the way through it, instead of the travel narrative it purported to be, it was more of a history book, pages and pages of what was probably copied from a library. Learned a bit about Uzbekistan and the author has a good style of writing when he wasn't quoting history books.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although this book is a little out of date, written in 2001, it is still probably the best introduction to modern Uzbekistan, and a good book to read before visiting the country. Bissell does a thorough job of explaining the complex history of Uzbekistan, especially under Soviet times and in the early years of independence under Islam Karimov’s authoritarian rule.

The story arc is simple: Bissell returns to Tashkent to see the family he stayed with 5 years earlier during his brief stay as a teacher with the Peace Corps, cut short by culture shock, homesickness, his immaturity and weak physical health. Together with a local guide and translator, Bissell travels on to Bukhara and Samarkand and the Ferghana Valley before finally making it to the ecological disaster of the Aral Sea.

There are no real adventures, except for a stop at a police checkpoint that goes briefly badly wrong. Bissell meets locals and aid workers and expats, tries to come to terms with his earlier personal failure in the Peace Corps, looks at a lot of old buildings, and bathetically fails to complete an important errand. Along the way he reflects on the futility of international development, on government corruption and mismanagement and repression, and on the challenges and uncertain future faced by Uzbekis.

Bissell is not a strong or sympathetic central character, but he is a good writer - sometimes too good. He carries you along with his story using the tools of a novelist, narrative pacing and well-drawn characters and vivid descriptions. But there are too many times when I stumbled over extended metaphors and elaborate clever turns of phrase - sometimes I didn’t care enough to puzzle out what he was trying to say. His storytelling can also come across as inauthentic: the dialogue often sounds staged, scripted, and some incidents are cinematically over-detailed. More autofiction than memoir.

Still, I learned a lot about a country that many people have never heard of, developed a deep respect for the Uzbeki people and their culture. and mostly enjoyed myself while doing it.

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

I should mention that I struggle to make it through nonfiction books. I like long-form journalism, but find my attention dissipating around page 40 with most nonfiction. That's when I start eyeing the tall stack of novels and story collections on my nightstand. But Bissell's Chasing the Sea held my attention all the way through and kept me curious about this corner of the world.

The book is a mix of personal reporting and a condensed history of Central Asia and its relationship to Russia, China, and the West. Bissell spent a few months in Uzbekistan as a Peace Corps volunteer in 1996, but washed out of the program. This book is his return visit. Now he's a successful journalist and editor, and we get the feeling that he's trying to prove something to himself. And along for the ride is Rustam, his translator, who brings levity and color to the story. Rustam is a great character, and I wish we could have spent more time with him, especially as the narrative winds down in the end.

The history of Uzbekistan and its major cities is fascinating, and Bissell does a decent autodidact lay-of-the-land from his own reading. It's more like getting a fascinating rundown of historical events from a friend at the bar than it is a history lecture, though the details can get pretty thick. But this region and its history have been neglected for so long that even these difficult passages feel like a tiny amount of the attention we should pay to this part of the world.

As the narrative winds perpetually forward with its stumbling progress toward the ever-elusive Aral Sea, I started to think that reaching the once-shores of the sea was really a distant subplot all along. When we do arrive, it feels too late, and in many ways it is.

[emily Ying · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author stayed in Central Asia, Uzbekistan specifically, as a member of Peace Corp. based on the cover of the book when I spotted in library you could tell it's dated a little bit before me but the author describes his life in such a vivid and detailed way that is still relevant to me as a recent college grad who wants to explore.
The book is like the authors impression and daily thoughts on his days while living in that land.
The book taught you a lot on the culture and history of Uzbeskistan.
For the ancient part, I learned about Timur the Lame who conquered the three continents actually originates from Uzbekistan? Also the Islamic influence for Bukhara being a sharif itself out of the three great sharifs. Also the minarets sculpture that Islamic architecture use to ventilate during hot days(Chinese architecture don't have such thing, only bricks to keep out of rain), learned about "madrasa" means school in Arabic. The author talked about several cities and towns in Uzbekistan.
Oh, one funny fact I learned that central Asian actually call "Alexandra the great" as "iskandar" or al iskandar, that is funny.

Then it's the soviet influence. I learned about how Russian tries to russifie the area. The author talked about the shrinking of the ancient Aral Sea in the town of moynaq.

This book is packed with information and insights and took quite some time to digest. I marked it as to read in February and finally finished it in early June..... oh well......

This book is definitely insightful if you want to understand such a pivot in the history and culture of the Central Asia and its surrounding cultures, or Eurasia continent in general.

[Therese · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is a toxic, carcinogenic, tubercullin-inducing wound in the saline-riddled sand where once the Aral Sea existed as the world's fourth largest inland body of water. In 1969 the Sea equaled Lake Michigan in size. By 1996, when Tom Bissell was briefly posted to Uzbekistan by the Peace Corps, it had already shrunk by one third from its original 26,000 square miles, roughly the size of the Republic of Ireland or Sri Lanka. Bissell was obviously so moved by the country and its people that he resolved to return in 2002 and attempt to grapple with the impact of the ongoing shrinking of the Aral Sea. Lying between the Amu Darya (Oxus) river in the south, and the Sir Darya, (Jaxartes) river in the north, at one time the Sea was more or less evenly divided by the border between Kazakhstan to the north, and Uzbekistan to the south, more specifically in the semi-autonomous region of Karakalpakistan. Now derricks and praying-mantis-like machinery bite into the salt-crisped earth, searching for deposits of natural gas and other extractable resources.
Chasing the Sea is an enthralling, extraordinary book, part travelogue, part history, part political analysis, part love story about Uzbekistan, if not an elegy to the Aral Sea, perhaps this Central Asian state's main modern claim to fame, or more correctly, notoriety. Lest anyone dismiss it as dry and academic, Jonathan Franzen enthused "Tom Bissell is a terrifically sympathetic young writer. Give yourself a treat and read him. " His powers of description are emotive and captivating, relying on carefully chosen nouns and even verbs that have no need of florid adjectives. His travels took him to Tashkent, Bukhara and Samarkand, the first of which happened to be the location of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Cancer Ward. Was Solzhenitsyn prescient or prophetic? Cancer is a fact of life in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and likely all those places down-wind of Soviet atomic, nuclear and biological weapons tests in Central Asia. Tuberculosis is of epidemic proportions, most of it resistant to several types of antibiotics. Goiters, thyroid and respiratory diseases also pose huge challenges for both the population and health authorities.
We can blame Joseph Stalin as the main (but not the sole or earliest culprit) for the destruction of the Aral Sea because of his disastrous, stubborn decisions to divert the rivers and build canals to irrigate the vast tracts of cotton which was a main Soviet export at one time, and which is a greedy consumer of water. In spite of being an inland sea, the Aral contained a degree of salinity, which rose to the surface as dry salt as the Sea receded, intermingled with the residue of pesticides and fertilizers that were heavily and indiscriminately used, choking the life-giving soil around it and all that grew on it, as well as all that swam in the sea itself.
When Bissell was in Uzbekistan in 2002, the southern port of Moynaq was already 60 miles south of the Sea, with the rusting skeletons of fishing boats mute reminders of the thriving fishing industry that once flourished on the Sea. The northern port, Aralsk, in Kazakhstan, has managed to hang on to life, with a Rohrschacht-like blob called the North Aral Sea, thanks to the Kok-Aral Dam in the north-east of the country. To the south, all that remains of the Aral is a thin sliver to the west that is as polluted and dead as the land around it. It is estimated that the Aral Sea today is 10% of its original size. Incredibly, Uzbekistan still grows cotton in this salt and chemical-riddled earth, with a forced-labor requirement that sees every citizen spend at least one day picking the annual crop, regardless of age, status or physical condition.
As far back as the 1920s, the Soviet Red Army was looking around for a site for its proposed bioweapons facility. The ultimate choice was Vozrozhdeniya, an island in the middle of the Aral Sea. Killer biological weapons were developed and tested, including anthrax, smallpox, plague and brucellosis. Aralsk 7, its laboratories, as well as the town on the Kazakh side of the lake that supported them, no longer exist, closed down with the fall of the Soviet Union, and of course Vozrozhdeniya is no longer an island, it has merged with the desolate landscape of sand and salt all around it.
Stalin also despoiled Central Asia with his countless gulags and slave labor camps, following and enlarging on practices established by Lenin. In the far north-east of Uzbekistan, to the east of Tashkent, at Angren, he sent men suspected of disloyalty to the Motherland to work in horrendous conditions in the region's coal mines and other forced labor camps, while he sent Alexander Solzhenitzyn to Ekibastuz, in northern Kazakhstan, the site of the largest open-face coal mine in the world. He deported 200,000 Polish Jews to Samarkand and nearby Jeezax, to toil in labor camps. A small group of survivors returned 60 years later to receive warm welcomes from the local Muslims. When some of the deportees returned to Poland, they discovered that they were the lucky ones, most of their relatives had died in Hitler's extermination camps. AlZhir Women's Gulag Museum, near Astana, Kazakhstan, contains moving photographs and memorabilia of the thousands of Stalin-era female deportees and their children who were exiled due to the alleged activities of fathers, husbands, sons or brothers.
In company with Bob Shacochis, Chasing the Sea will draw me "back again and again to savor the dervish spin of Tom Bissell's prose, the dazzling starbursts of blazing intelligence, the banquet of historical narrative and fresh geopolitical commentary......Can Chasing the Sea be Bissell's first book?" Readers, give yourselves a treat and read this scintillating odyssey into a landscape that is no less affecting because it has suffered the worst ecological disaster that we can view with our own eyes. The research Tom Bissell conducted, and his travels through the blighted Aral landscape obviously touched him on a deeply emotional level. His withdrawal from life for some years, and his addiction to video games and heroin are understandable. Thankfully for all of us who value excellent writing, Tom Bissell did resume authoring noteworthy books. I am currently reading his latest offering, Apostle, Travels Among the Tombs of the Twelve.

[Wes F · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written by a burned-out former Peace Corps volunteer--this book gives some great insights (from an early 2000s perspective/context) on the history of Uzbekistan & the Uzbeks, including the effect of 70+ years of socialistic control and planning. What an unmitigated disaster overall. Though only the last chapter of the book actually deals with the man-made "designed" disaster of the Aral Sea, it is a fitting summary to the book's subtitle invoking the "ghosts of empire in Central Asia." Here's Bissell's poignant description of driving out of Moynaq, the former Karakalpak fishing city that back in 2002 was situated some 100 miles from the still rapidly receding coast of the Aral Sea: "With a bump and momentary plunge [we] exited the town proper and entered what was, in living memory, the bed of the Aral Sea. Looking out the window quickly became an exercise in dislocation. Beyond the Land Cruiser's porthole was not reality but something purely conceptual. The Scene of the Greatest Ecological Crime in History. A land made alien by betrayal. Whatever its nature now, it was threatening and hostile. No human presence to reassure one here. This was off-planet, a place of low roads and poison flora." Bissell did his historical & literary homework, writes with florid prose, and has a great, annotated bibliography.

[Pragya Jain · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had been looking for a book on Uzbekistan to better understand its history and culture, and Chasing the Sea turned out to be a great find. While most fiction from the region is old and rarely translated, and much nonfiction feels one-sided, Tom Bissell offers a detailed and engaging look at Uzbekistan’s past and present.
He traces the country’s history from the Amirs to the Russian and British influences, showing how these shaped its economy and identity. Though the book is framed around his journey to the Aral Sea, Bissell travels across Uzbekistan, meeting people and capturing an authentic picture of the country in the early 2000s.
That said, some parts reflect an American perspective, Bissell himself admits his bias against the Soviets, so a few sections are best read with a pinch of salt, and you may want to cross-check some details online.
It’s a well-written and insightful introduction to Uzbekistan and a good starting point for anyone exploring Central Asian literature and history.

[Ashwin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a solid book but took me way too long to read because was just a tiny bit shy of being truly engaging. The biggest credit to the author is that this book is incredibly honest about what it is, and doesn't try to overstep itself into making grand objective statements. A very human, journal-y account of one man's return to Uzbekistan is peppered with concise and interesting history, and vignettes that breathe uncomfortable life into the nation's post-soviet society. The book also provides useful insight and perspective on the international workers and organizations attempting to solve some of the most hopeless issues of the underdeveloped world. I was totally unaware of the issues surrounding the Aral Sea, a genre of story that unfortunately climate change will make more common in the coming decades. I have been nursing an interest in Central Asia and Uzbekistan specifically, and I would recommend this book for anyone in a similar situation.

[James Ron · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful combination of personal introspection, travel journalism, history, keen social, cultural and political observation, and pragmatic environmentalism. The writer fled his Peace Corps posting in Uzbekistan during the 1990s (sounds like he endured a very miserable seven months before leaving), only to return five years later and write a moving, informative, and highly entertaining account of Central Asia, Uzbekistan, his own experiences, and the lives of the people he meets on his journey through Uzbekistan to the Aral Sea, a site of enormous environmental destruction. Along the way he visits Tashkent, Samarkhand, Bukhara, and other important cities and historical sites, and describes their history and contemporary conditions with a sympathetic but critical eye.

I have visited some of the countries and cities he talks about, and wish I had read this book before I went. This is truly a great contribution.