Ella Maillart has been well known to British readers of travel writings since the 1930s. A member of the Royal Geographical Society for many years, she was awarded the Sir Percy Sykes Medal in 1955. Her books have been translated into German, Swedish, French, and Spanish. Maillart brought to travel writing an unflinching honesty and a singular seriousness of purpose. Her constant goal was to reach locations where the essential rhythms of life follow a pattern refined through thousands of years, and she achieved this aim among the shepherds and nomads of northern Asia. In chronicling her travels through these regions she hoped to offer a spiritual balm to Western readers, locating a fundamental quality of life that had been lost to them. Although her journeys were arduous and often dangerous (prompting one reviewer to call her "a dauntless lady"), she disdained heroics in her writing and used her...