In Siberia

Colin Thubron takes you right into Siberia with him. And with him, you can experience the hardships and the love of the land that these people face. This is not a tourist book. It is a book about people, interwoven with geographic fact.

What on earth drives Colin Thubron? Why, traversing a subcontinent whose name has become synonymous with suffering, would he face tedium, banality and appalling weather to seek out agonizing communities, explore Artic death camps, plumb the worldview of demoralized individuals and contemplate remote sites where dramatic events unfolded years, if not millennia, ago? Certainly there is an unrelenting fascination with the mysterious heart of Eurasia, crisscrossed at least three times by the Russian and Chinese-speaking author, but there seems to be more. The intensity of the effort to bear witness to mankind's resistance to inexorable forces sometimes seems like part of a manic attempt to hold back the passage of time itself. Whatever the motivation the result is particularly appropriate when dealing with a place where not only maps, but also human memory and history itself have already been partially "blanked out" by a truly evil empire. This splendid book not only enlightens us about a part of the world and its peoples of which most people are ignorant but makes us regard with awe the commitment of its author.

I thought that the depiction of Siberia was magical, and would certainly recommend this book to those that have not read it yet. For those who have, and are interested in more about this land, I would recommend Tent Life in Siberia: An Incredible Account of Siberian Adventure, Travel, and Survival.

We found Colin Thubron at least the equal of Newby and Theroux with the confidence to depend on his unique description skills without photographic backup. What puts this book among the top few is his commitment to the language which permitted him to hear first hand the concerns of those he met, which he reported while allowing the readers to draw their own conclusions. This is an essential reference for inclusion among the few strictly necessary aids to travel through a tortured and fragile land.

This is a tremendous book, one that I would recommend to anybody that has either spent some time in Siberia or that is simply interested in the region. Indeed, one of the few criticisms that I have is that the book is too short. Thubron glosses over a lot of interesting places. He is undoubtedly more interested in peripheral, off the beaten track places than he is in major cities. He barely describes places such as Novosibirsk, the largest city in Siberia and the third largest in Russia. He similarly doesn't spend much time describing cities like Omsk, Ekaterinburg, and Krasnoyarsk, and he doesn't even make it to Vladivostok. Thubron's forte is describing life in places forgotten by Moscow and unknown to the outside world. I've long been fascinated by Siberia and have spent many hours poring over maps, identifying population points in the far north and wondering how on earth anybody could live there. Well, Thubron visits such places and portrays the difficult conditions of life there. He spends nearly a month in a small town near the Arctic Circle. Since there are obviously no hotels there, he finds a bed in the hospital. He describes how every night the drunks knock on the doors and windows trying to get inside so to find a warm bed for the night. The local doctor is a highly educated man who could have had a successful career in any of Russia's larger cities, and it is fascinating to read his story of how he ended up in this godforsaken place. Thubron also describes how Soviet planning destroyed many of the traditions and ways of life of the native peoples of Russia's far north. The author has a fine ear for detecting racism in his discussions with ordinary Russians, whether it is directed against the ethnic minority groups whose traditions were altered under the Soviets or the Chinese who have immigrated in large numbers to Russia's Far East. Among the more interesting parts of the book is Thubron's stay in Birobidzhan, the capital of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast' in the Far East. This region was originally established to serve as a homeland for Russia's Jews, and many Jews from abroad immigrated there in the early Soviet period. Thubron describes how most of the Jews have emigrated to Israel and those still living there are planning to do so as soon as they find the means. Whatever semblance of a Jewish community that existed there in the past has pretty much evaporated. Thubron also visits a community of Orthodox Old Believers in the Republic of Buryatia and describes how they are trying to hold on to their traditions amid the social upheavals that have engulfed post-Soviet Russia. The book ends with Thubron's visit to Kolyma, the infamous prison camp during Soviet times. He provides a chilling account of the atrocities that occurred there and it is simply eerie reading his description of the buildings that still stand. Overall, Thubron does not provide a great deal of direct political analysis. Rather, his tactic is to understand how the tumultuous events of Russia's history, both recent and distant, have shaped the lives of ordinary people. Thubron is at his best when he lets these ordinary people speak for themselves and relate their experiences. This is truly a great book for anybody interested in Russia, past and present. I only wish that Thubron would write a sequel to this work!