Six Days in Kashgar, a riveting and relentless political thriller by Newbury author

A scuffle in a Kashgar side street spirals into a confrontation between Superpowers in a riveting and relentless political thriller by Newbury author Rowan MacNeill.

“I heard that there was a great market at the edge of the world, deep in the deserts of western China and that men – Uzbeks and Kazan Tartars, Tajiks and Afghans – come in over the high passes, to trade both with each other and with the local Uyghurs. And what they buy and sell there is livestock: goats and horses, mules and donkeys and cows and even camels, and the market is as old as the Silk Road city of Kashgar itself … and I thought to myself – I simply have to go and see that., says Newbury-based author Rowan MacNeill when asked what inspired him to write his new novel Six Days in Kashgar.

“What I found there was even more amazing; a city with a colourful history that might have come from the Arabian Nights, with tales of the Fragrant Concubine, the riders of the Golden Horde, Yakub Beg and the Great Game (the struggle between Russia and Britain for power in Asia), archaeologist-adventurers plundering the buried riches of the Silk Road and stories of betrayal and bravery which would not be out of place in a Boys-Own book, except that they’re true.

“Not to forget what is happening there today, the oppression of the Uyghurs by their Chinese masters and the ruthless exploitation of the region’s mineral resources.”

“And a story came to me about the people there and how they interact with the wider world and, to do justice to such a place, it would need to be a modern-day tale of high adventure with a fearless heroine and a cynical but reluctant hero (the best kind) and at its heart a simple human motivation, a big brother’s determination to protect his family. And it would include a cascade of events, from the trivial leading to the deadly serious.”

Hailing from North east England, Rowan MacNeill first moved to Newbury in 1985, to work on a civil engineering project at AWE (his original profession).

Now retired and with time to devote to his writing, he regards himself as primarily a storyteller - “Because everyone relates to stories – and the stories, once formed, more-or-less burn a hole in my pocket”.

The thing he places most value on is originality; “If people give me the privilege of their time to read what I’ve written,” he says, “then I owe it to them to provide something new and original, never merely derivative of something they have read or seen already.”

And so far, that approach has paid off - the reviews of Six Days in Kashgar have been uniformly excellent. “It’s immensely gratifying,” he says, “because, as a writer, what you want more than anything is for people to read and enjoy your story.”

And will there be more books to come?

“Oh, indeed,” he says. A second book is already coming out, The Green Mamba, which has a different setting and cast, but the same principles – originality, vivid characters, a colourful setting and a gripping story.

Available in paperback from Amazon at £8.99 (Spruce Goose Publications). Also available as an ebook.

Visit https://rowanmacneillstoryteller.com/ for more about the author.