NOMADS: The Wanderers Who Shaped Our World

A Spectator Book of the Year, this is sweeping and poetic, tracing the epic paths of wanderers across 12,000 years. Sattin weaves stories of mobile tribes who lived beyond imperial borders and created their own kingdoms and empires - Scythian, Xiongnu, Persian, Hun, Arab, Mongul, Mughal, Ottoman and others. With their embrace of multiculturalism, respect for nature's rhythms, and need for free movement, wandering peoples brought a glorious cultural flourishing to Eurasia, enabling the Renaissance and changing the human story. This is the untold history of civilisation, told through its outsiders, a sweeping narrative reconnecting us with our deepest mythology, unrecorded antiquity, and our natural world. 'He not only describes the nomadic way of life but evokes it in a book of beauty and beguiling rhythm' according to The Times. 'The story begins in the Zagros Mountains, Iran, a young man walking towards me with a stick slung across his shoulder and a flock at his feet...' A page-turning narrative and a brilliant piece of scholarship. 357pp, paperback with line art.