The Silk Road Affair

The Taliban and the Silk Road The fabled Silk Road has, for centuries, been the scene of opium and heroin traffic and frightening intrigue. Into this age old caldron, a Taiwanese woman, curator at the National Palace Museum in Taipei, searches for the long-lost or stolen portion of Chiang Kai-shek's Peking Museum art. Set in the surreal beauty of the Pamir Mountains of southern Tajikistan, Eva Yu's quest sets off a deadly wave of violence as she pursues her search for the missing relics. At the same time, a curator at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, Kip Hambroek, is reluctantly caught up in Eva's search, delaying his own research project - to find the Silk Road route Marco Polo might have followed in his return to Persia as the escort for Princess Koekecin - thwarted, but yet eventually proven as if by a miracle. As the story plays out in the dicey climate of fear, a young Sing-Song girl seeks acceptance, if not love, from Kip, only to die in a violent Taliban raid. The two curators cautiously approach a growing affection, liberally salted with humor. The Silk Road Affair is the story of a search for historical and personal meaning in the uneasy peace of this fragile mountain world.