"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Siberia is Russia's wild east--pillaged by the Cossacks for furs, later populated by exiles and prisoners, who diluted the native culture of hunters and Mongol-Turkish nomadic tribes. Thubron travels from unknown town to unknown town, hunting at sunset for shelter. Some of it is as bad as you would fear--endless, uninhabitable, treeless tundra, frozen solid eight months a year. There are ghostly gulag towns like Vorkuta with its smoke stacks, "black detritus", and death camps where prisoners worked 12 hours a day, living in minus 40 until death (usually two weeks).He finds grim broken-down people living only for vodka, freedom having escaped them again. "Scarce jobs and high prices were the new slave masters."
At other times In Siberia is more surprising--the rebirth of Christianity and eager building of monasteries; Mongol shamans; the 2,500,000- year-old mummified remains of a princess; sweaty 85 degree temperatures; Akademogorodok, an abandoned science city where a lone professor experiments with cosmic consciousness.
Like many of the people he meets, Thubron's book is weighed down by history, but it does succeed in quenching the curiosity about that great blank in the Atlas. --Sarah Champion
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
Book Description Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. 'If there were a Nobel Prize for travel writing, Thubron should win it' - Daily Mail'One of the finest books about contemporary Russia' ObserverThis is the account of Thubron's 15,000-mile journey through an astonishing country - one twelfth of the land surface of the whole earth. He journeyed by train, river and truck among the people most damaged by the breakup of the Soviet Union, traveling among Buddhists and animists, radical Christian sects, reactionary Communists and the remnants of a so-call Jewish state; from the site of the last Czar's murder and Rasputin's village, to the ice-bound graves of ancient Sythians, to Baikal, deepest and oldest of the world's lakes.It is the story of a people moving through the ruins of Communism into more private, diverse and often stranger worlds.'If there were a Nobel Prize for travel writing, Thubron should win it' Daily Mail This is the account of Thubron's 15,000-mile journey through an astonishing country - one twelfth of the land surface of the whole earth. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability. Seller Inventory # 9780099459262
Book Description Soft Cover. Condition: new. Seller Inventory # 9780099459262
Book Description paperback. Condition: New. Language: ENG. Seller Inventory # 9780099459262
Book Description Paperback. Condition: New. BRAND NEW ** SUPER FAST SHIPPING FROM UK WAREHOUSE ** 30 DAY MONEY BACK GUARANTEE. Seller Inventory # 9780099459262-GDR
Book Description Paperback / softback. Condition: New. New copy - Usually dispatched within 4 working days. This is the account of Thubron's 15,000-mile journey through an astonishing country - one twelfth of the land surface of the whole earth. Seller Inventory # B9780099459262
Book Description Condition: New. In. Seller Inventory # ria9780099459262_new
Book Description Paperback. Condition: Brand New. 304 pages. 7.76x5.08x0.79 inches. In Stock. Seller Inventory # __0099459264
Book Description Condition: New. 2008. Paperback. An account of author's 15,000-mile journey through an astonishing country - one twelfth of the land surface of the whole earth. It is the story of a people moving through the ruins of Communism into more private, diverse and often stranger worlds. Num Pages: 304 pages, 1 map, BIC Classification: 1DVUA; 1F; WTH; WTL. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 198 x 131 x 19. Weight in Grams: 220. . . . . . Seller Inventory # V9780099459262
Book Description Condition: New. 2008. Paperback. An account of author's 15,000-mile journey through an astonishing country - one twelfth of the land surface of the whole earth. It is the story of a people moving through the ruins of Communism into more private, diverse and often stranger worlds. Num Pages: 304 pages, 1 map, BIC Classification: 1DVUA; 1F; WTH; WTL. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 198 x 131 x 19. Weight in Grams: 220. . . . . . Books ship from the US and Ireland. Seller Inventory # V9780099459262
Book Description Condition: New. Buy with confidence! Book is in new, never-used condition. Seller Inventory # bk0099459264xvz189zvxnew