Travels in Siberia [Paperback]

Product Details

• Paperback: 560 pages
• Publisher: Picador; First Edition edition (September 27, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312610602
• ISBN-13: 978-0312610609
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  

By : Ian Frazier
Price : $12.52
You Save : $7.48 (37%)

 

Travels in Siberia [Paperback]

 

Consumer Critiques

I also read the excerpts in the New Yorker and was fairly anxious to get the total book. I was not disappointed. This is easily a single of the preferred nonfiction books (or books of any type, for that matter) I have ever read. I am usually wary about employing the overworked word "masterpiece," but I definitely think this is one particular. Frazier takes us on a fantastic journey: his gradual discovery of Russia by way of its literature, history and by meeting quite a few native Russians in New York his deciding to take a look at the country with Russian good friends his efforts to learn to read and speak the Russian language and his 1st trip to eastern Siberia by crossing the Bering Strait from Alaska to Chukotka. The longest journey he takes is by van with two Russian guides across the entire length of Siberia in 2001, arriving at the Pacific Ocean on September 11th. He returns to Siberia in 2005, traveling from Yakutsk to the village of Oimyakon, "mentioned to be the coldest spot on earth outside Antarctica," and along the Topolinskaya Highway to the see the abandoned prison camps of Stalin's Gulag. His last go to is in 2009, when he travels by himself to Novosibirsk, Siberia's biggest city. All through the book, Frazier's descriptions of the forests, the steppes, the taiga, the mountains, the rivers and lakes, the cities, the villages, the monuments and outposts, as well as the horrific mosquitoes and the quite often questionable food, are just riveting. He meets a really remarkable assortment of males and women from all walks of Siberian life, learning how they survive, and regularly thrive, in such a challenging, unforgiving spot. He recounts tales of lots of figures, both famous and obscure, from Siberia's amazing past: Genghis Khan and the Mongol hordes, the revolutionary Decembrists of the 1820s, exiles like Dostoyevsky and those who died in the horrific Soviet prison camps, Czar Nicholas II, Rasputin, Rudolph Nureyev, and even Yul Brenner. And like all amazing writers of nonfiction, Frazier sees factors that other people would miss and makes discoveries that will take your breath away he is usually seeking for the unobvious and finding the most fascinating wherever he goes. Consequently, we are treated to a exceptional portrait of an astounding location by one of our finest writers. Ian Frazier has written a terrific, amazing book.

I am going to write my assessment with no biasing myself by reading the others.
I lived and worked in Siberian and the Russian Far East for many years in the 1990s. Frazier has at all times been one particular of my preferred authors he is king of detail. "On the Rez" was a phenomenal book. Missing my second property, Russia, I snatched up Travels in Siberia the instant it became obtainable.
I'm going to commence with the limitations of this book:
1. East of Chita and Yakutia, the locals uniformly contact their land the "Russian Far East." They do not contact it Siberia, any more than individuals from Idaho or California call their land the Midwest. Just like Americans have the Midwest and the West, the Russians have the corresponding landlocked Siberia and the coastal Far East. It perpetuates Westerners' geographic misnaming of the region.
2. Leaving the history of Siberia's Indigenous peoples out of the book. This is the most egregious oversight of this book, and it really is especially perplexing given Frazier's history researching and writing "On the Rez." Can you think about an author writing on the history and the experience of the Dakotas with no mentioning the Sioux? This book manages to paint Siberia and the Russian Far East as the historic battleground of Russians and the Mongols, without mentioning the couple dozen tribes - of Asian, Turkish, or European descent - that migrated to, lived in, and defined Siberia for centuries just before either the Russians or the Mongols arrived. In a handful of of these regions, Indigenous peoples nevertheless outnumber Russians, and it is nevertheless common to hear the native languages spoken on the streets or in government offices. Frazier writes about two visits to the Republic of Buryatia devoid of clarifying that Buryatians are Indigenous descendents of the Mongols. He then visits a bit with the Even peoples in Yakutia, but again fails to relate any specifics about their history, even though the book has some history on the Russian colonization of the region.
3. Frazier entered Siberia with the notion that it is All About Gulags that is a typical American lens/misperception. Siberia is a whole lot of factors, and Siberians do not, nor did they ever, assume of their land as Prison Land, any much more than Californians presently obsess about Japanese internment camps in California. In both areas the gulags are a sad and horrible history but they are far from defining the place. If you lived in Siberia for a year and listened to Russian conversation, you would by no means know there are any prisons there. An additional stereotype of Siberia that Frazier failed to question, and ended up just perpetuating.
four. Siberia and the Far East are the quite most breathtaking (a) in nature and all the wilderness parks, which Frazier never appears to get off the highway to see! and (b) in private houses, where Russians and other natives totally open their hearts and are your greatest buddies for life. Frazier is a great deal more exposed to the (significantly harsher) "public life" of Russia, the train toilets and the public litter, than to its splendid private life. Russians often mentioned to me, "I've visited America, and it's boring there." What they often mean is that Russians, and especially those who reside east of the Urals, are a pretty social, hospitable, warm, fun men and women who know how to have a superior time. Frazier for whatever cause barely gets a peak at this. And he writes about forests, but under no circumstances seriously gets a look at how gorgeous they are in Siberia, since he is usually sort of on the major drag, pushed on by two hosts from St. Petersburg who only want to drive more quickly rather than slowing down and in reality seeing anything.
That said, this book is wonderfully written, has riveting detail, and has some really brilliant insights into both the Russian psyche and the land that Frazier visited. Worth reading.

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