Border Crossing: On The Road From Peking To Paris By Rosie Thomas
Border Crossing: On the Road From Peking to Paris
The Riveting, High-Stakes Chronicle of a 16,000-Kilometre Vintage Motor Rally and a Novelist's Near-Death Journey of the Soul
The Riveting, High-Stakes Chronicle of a 16,000-Kilometre Vintage Motor Rally and a Novelist's Near-Death Journey of the Soul
Bibliographic Specifications
- Title: Border Crossing: On the Road From Peking to Paris
- Author: Rosie Thomas
- Publisher: Little, Brown & Company, London / Boston
- Publication Date: 4 June 1998
- ISBN-10: 0316647128
- ISBN-13: 9780316647120
- Edition Details: First Edition, First Printing. Standard Hardcover Release.
- Binding: Original publisher’s premium cloth-bound hardcover casing with gold-stamped spine lettering.
- Physical Format: Octavo (8vo), 304 pages. Generously enhanced with centralRepositories of high-contrast black-and-white and full-colour archival photographic plates mapping cross-continental landscapes, vintage rally machinery, and remote checkpoints.
- Language: English
Official Condition Report
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The Book: Used – Like New / Fine (F)
- Exterior / Boards: The original hardcover casing is in absolute showroom condition. The cloth panels are flawlessly flat, completely clean, and square at all corner tips. The cloth binding remains robustly unyielding, showing zero linear shelf-lean, vertical structural collapse, or pushing to the head and tail bands.
- Interior: The text block is exceptionally crisp, bright, and perfectly tight. All 304 internal pages are clean, white, and completely intact. The leaves remain entirely free of traditional user highlighting, underline annotations, library processing stamps, owner name inscriptions, or folded dog-ears. A beautifully maintained, collector-grade survivor that has been meticulously looked after thus far.
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The Dust Jacket: Used – Like New (LN)
- Condition Detail: The original illustrated paper dust jacket is present, whole, and completely entire. Exhibits only the most microscopic, superficial signs of minor shelf friction along the extreme margins from safe storage. The jacket faces retain their bold color saturation, and it comes fully protected with a premium Cellophane cover, which guards against future handling while presenting an immaculate display profile on a collector's shelf.
Synopsis & Historical Value
Published in 1998, Border Crossing is an exceptional, raw, and deeply engrossing travel epic that documents the historic re-enactment of the world's most legendary endurance race. In the summer of 1907, the first international motor rally from Peking to Paris took place with only five cars, their navigational aids limited to telegraph poles and the sun. Ninety years later, 110 vintage cars gathered in Peking to recreate the feat, facing a grueling 45-day, 16,000-kilometre trek across the planet.
Bypassing standard, sanitized travelogues, acclaimed novelist Rosie Thomas takes readers inside the cockpit of a competitor's car. The narrative details the high-stakes pressure of the daily time challenges, the strange camaraderie forged in the face of isolation, and the brutal physical reality of sleeping outdoors or in flea-pit hotels in foreign lands. Crucially, the text delves deeply into Thomas's own profound internal journey, culminating in a terrifying, near-death experience that forced her to question her life and motivations. For motorsport purists, travel literature enthusiasts, and serious biography collectors, this premium first-edition hardcover collectible copy serves as an indispensable primary historical archive capturing a phenomenal human achievement.
Author Profile: Rosie Thomas
Rosie Thomas (the pen name of Janey King) is a highly distinguished British author, novelist, and veteran travel chronicler. Educated at Oxford, she has authored over twenty critically acclaimed, international bestselling novels translated into multiple languages, earning deep respect across global literary circles for her sharp narrative pacing, psychological depth, and evocative handling of exotic locations.
Renowned for her adventurous spirit, Thomas's real-life exploits match the sweeping scale of her prose—having not only completed the grueling Peking-to-Paris rally but also trekked across the Himalayas, traveled extensively through Antarctica, and competed in the rugged Pharaohs Rally in Egypt. Her unique combination of elite creative writing mastery and raw, frontline endurance experience ensures that her non-fiction accounts cut through standard travel clichés, providing readers with an authoritative, definitive historical chronicle polished with exceptional literary pacing.
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