Travels in Siberia - Ian Frazier

Travels in Siberia

By Ian Frazier

  • Release Date: 2010-10-12
  • Genre: Travel & Adventure
Score: 4
4
From 51 Ratings

Description

A Dazzling Russian travelogue from the bestselling author of Great Plains



In his astonishing new work, Ian Frazier, one of our greatest and most entertaining storytellers, trains his perceptive, generous eye on Siberia, the storied expanse of Asiatic Russia whose grim renown is but one explanation among hundreds for the region's fascinating, enduring appeal. In Travels in Siberia, Frazier reveals Siberia's role in history—its science, economics, and politics—with great passion and enthusiasm, ensuring that we'll never think about it in the same way again.

With great empathy and epic sweep, Frazier tells the stories of Siberia's most famous exiles, from the well-known—Dostoyevsky, Lenin (twice), Stalin (numerous times)—to the lesser known (like Natalie Lopukhin, banished by the empress for copying her dresses) to those who experienced unimaginable suffering in Siberian camps under the Soviet regime, forever immortalized by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in The Gulag Archipelago.

Travels in Siberia is also a unique chronicle of Russia since the end of the Soviet Union, a personal account of adventures among Russian friends and acquaintances, and, above all, a unique, captivating, totally Frazierian take on what he calls the "amazingness" of Russia—a country that, for all its tragic history, somehow still manages to be funny. Travels in Siberia will undoubtedly take its place as one of the twenty-first century's indispensable contributions to the travel-writing genre.

Reviews

  • Very interesting read

    4
    By VerySiberian
    Great book, but I recommend skipping the sections the delve deep into Russian history and focus on the author's firsthand accounts of his travels. They are fascinating. I find Russian history interesting, too, but the author goes off on tangents and focuses on minutiae of his personal interest. This book should be abridged with 100 or so pages cut, and would be much more readable. It is also a shame that there were no photographs; such would have made the scenes, people, and landscape come alive more.
  • Not the best travel read.

    2
    By ReadSpeed
    Didn't enjoy this all that much.
  • Entertaining.

    4
    By VooDooBike
    I first discovered excerpts of this book in the New Yorker. I found it Insightful, historical, offbeat, personable and overall entertaining. Makes me want to go. Slinkystudio's review here and his many other reviews in the Travel genre always say to read Interstate Exits (or whatever the title is) instead. Why plug the same book so many times? Sounds fishy.... or slinky. Always get the sample first of course.

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