Colin Thubron interviewed by Alex Diggins

Celebrated travel writer and Booker-longlisted novelist Colin Thubron talks about Passage, a short novel with a wide canvas – a simmering love triangle, set in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings. 

Kathleen lies awake in the operating theatre as she undergoes brain surgery, her husband Robert watching. Soon afterwards, the couple leave for an ill-advised holiday in Egypt, together with the third person in their marriage, Robert’s brother Alan. Each of them is aware that the tumour in Kathleen’s brain may be fatal. Joining the trio is their Egyptian guide, Ashraf, who is compulsively drawn to Kathleen even as he is caught up in his country’s turbulent politics. 

In taut, glittering prose, Colin Thubron shifts among the perspectives of the four protagonists in a narrative of mesmerising scope and power.

Colin Thubron is a celebrated travel writer, winner of many prizes and awards. His classic travel books include: Among the Russians (1983), Behind the Wall (1987), In Siberia (1999), Shadow of the Silk Road (2006) and The Amur River (2021). He is also the author of eight acclaimed works of fiction, including A Cruel Madness (1984), winner of the PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award, To the Last City, long-listed for the Booker Prize (2002), and Night of Fire (2017).

‘Lyrical, tender and touchingly convincing’ Financial Times

Thubron talks to Alex Diggins, an investigative journalist and literary critic, who writes for The Telegraph, The Sunday Times, The Observer and The Spectator.