This series is designed to bring to North American readers the once-unheard voices of writers who have achieved wide acclaim at home, but are not recognized beyond the borders of their native lands. With special emphasis on women writers, Interlink's Emerging Voices series publishes the best of the world's contemporary literature in translation or original English.

In 1884, John Compton Pyne, a British soldier, having finished his tour of duty in India, decided to make a detour on his trip home in order to spend three months crossing Persia unaccompanied except for the local muleteers. Among his accouterments he packed a small leather-bound sketchbook in which he not only wrote a journal but also added beautiful and charming watercolor illustrations. This edition reprints his adventurous journal alongside an introduction that contextualizes this trip against the background of the Persian influence in British culture, and sets this influence as a driving...