The author of this book was travelling the length of the Amur - the great river that marks the boundary between Siberia and China - in 1991 when news broke of the conservative coup to depose President Gorbachev. A few days later the ship's tannoy announced that the coup had failed and its leaders fled - the political leadership of the Soviet Union was evidently in disarray. The collapse of the Communists' vast empire seemed imminent and Terzani resolved to discover what the peoples of the 15 Soviet republics thought about the stunning news from Moscow. In the weeks that followed he travelled westward to Siberia, crossing Central Asia and visiting the republics of the Caucasus, where the disintegration of the repressive Soviet regime was resulting in a wave of fervent nationalism and violent unrest. The search for the leftovers of the old empire brought him to discover the new force surging from the ashes of Communism: Islam and the prospect of a Unified Central Asian Republic - Turkestan. Terzani presents an overview of turbulent Central Asia, complete with historical flashbacks and travellers' observations, helping to create an understanding of the radical transformation now breaking the former Soviet Union apart.