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Title: Travels in Siberia

Author: Ian Frazier

Narrator: Ian Frazier

Format: Unabridged

Length: 20 hrs and 30 mins

Language: English

Release date: 10-12-10

Publisher: Macmillan Audio

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 266 votes

Genres: History, World

Publisher's Summary:

A Dazzling Russian travelogue from the best-selling author of Great Plains.

In Travels in Siberia, Ian Frazier trains his eye for unforgettable detail on Siberia, that vast expanse of Asiatic Russia. He explores many aspects of this storied, often grim region, which takes up one-seventh of the land on earth. He writes about the geography, the resources, the native peoples, the history, the 40-below midwinter afternoons, the bugs.

The book brims with Mongols, half-crazed Orthodox archpriests, fur seekers, ambassadors of the czar bound for Peking, tea caravans, German scientists, American prospectors, intrepid English nurses, and prisoners and exiles of every kind - from Natalie Lopukhin, banished by the czarina for copying her dresses; to the noble Decembrist revolutionaries of the 1820s; to the young men and women of the Peoples Will movement whose fondest hope was to blow up the czar; to those who met still-ungraspable suffering and death in the Siberian camps during Soviet times.

More than just a historical travelogue, Travels in Siberia is also an account of Russia since the end of the Soviet Union and a personal reflection on the all-around amazingness of Russia, a country that still somehow manages to be funny.

Siberian travel books have been popular since the 13th century, when monks sent by the pope went east to find the Great Khan and wrote about their journeys. Travels in Siberia will take its place as the 21st centurys indispensable contribution to the genre.

Editorial Reviews:

Travels in Siberia by Ian Frazier and read by the author could very simply be described as Siberia: history of, people of, remoteness of, mythology about, and travels in. This description would not, however, do justice to the mixture of joy, comedy, and incredulity with which Frazier reads his book.

The author goes to great lengths to explain why he became fascinated by what he calls the greatest horrible country in the world. It certainly was not the smell of Russia the olfactory amalgam of sour milk, cucumber peels, wet cement, and mud that slapped Frazier in the face whenever he first stepped from an airplane into any Russian airport terminal. Nor was it the extraordinary amount of trash that befouled every town, village, and roadside rest stop he visited. Those were merely minor distractions as Frazier continued to try and learn the language, read more books, and visit by car, train, and plane Siberian destinations even more remote and more physically taxing than those on his previous trip. Fraziers infectious wonder at the breadth of the land and the scope of its history, his wry observations about the incongruities of normal life lived at degrees far below zero, and his hapless and frequently acrimonious adventures with his occasional Russian guide, Sergei Lunev, leave the listener equally enthralled with Siberia.

Frazier has a talent for comically pointing out aspects of Siberian life that are most different from what Americans consider normal. For example, curiosity turns to puzzlement then to all-out disbelief as Frazier realizes that couples are holding their weddings literally alongside parts of the trans-Siberian highway. The reality of what is taking place only sinks in as one boisterous celebration spills onto the highway and stops traffic in either direction.