“There was good reason why the cultures, cities and peoples who lived along the Silk Roads developed and advanced: as they traded and exchanged ideas, they learnt and borrowed from each other, stimulating further advances in philosophy, the sciences, language… As tastes became more sophisticated, so did appetites for information. Alongside increasingly sophisticated tastes came

increasingly refined ideas.” (Peter Frankopan, The Silk Roads) History teaches us that this is how cities and cultures thrived. It’s beautiful to think that this is how our minds could flourish, hence this reading project that officially began in 2020 and which embraces the literary tapestry of the Silk Route and the Fertile Crescent from the ancient to the present.