On the Run in Siberia

On the Run in Siberia
Author: Rane Willerslev
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
Total Pages: 231
Release: 2012
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0816676267

Recounts the Danish anthropologist's year living in exile in Siberia among Yukaghir hunters after fleeing from the police, who were set to arrest him because of his efforts to organize a fair-trade fur cooperative with the hunters.

Travels in Siberia

Travels in Siberia
Author: Ian Frazier
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Total Pages: 541
Release: 2010-10-12
Genre: Travel
ISBN: 1429964316

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.

The Lost Pianos of Siberia

The Lost Pianos of Siberia
Author: Sophy Roberts
Publisher: Grove Press
Total Pages: 443
Release: 2020-08-04
Genre: Travel
ISBN: 0802149308

This “melodious” mix of music, history, and travelogue “reveals a story inextricably linked to the drama of Russia itself . . . These pages sing like a symphony.” —The Wall Street Journal Siberia’s story is traditionally one of exiles, penal colonies, and unmarked graves. Yet there is another tale to tell. Dotted throughout this remote land are pianos—grand instruments created during the boom years of the nineteenth century, as well as humble Soviet-made uprights that found their way into equally modest homes. They tell the story of how, ever since entering Russian culture under the westernizing influence of Catherine the Great, piano music has run through the country like blood. How these pianos traveled into this snowbound wilderness in the first place is testament to noble acts of fortitude by governors, adventurers, and exiles. Siberian pianos have accomplished extraordinary feats, from the instrument that Maria Volkonsky, wife of an exiled Decembrist revolutionary, used to spread music east of the Urals, to those that brought reprieve to the Soviet Gulag. That these instruments might still exist in such a hostile landscape is remarkable. That they are still capable of making music in far-flung villages is nothing less than a miracle. The Lost Pianos of Siberia follows Roberts on a three-year adventure as she tracks a number of instruments to find one whose history is definitively Siberian. Her journey reveals a desolate land inhabited by wild tigers and deeply shaped by its dark history, yet one that is also profoundly beautiful—and peppered with pianos. “An elegant and nuanced journey through literature, through history, through music, murder and incarceration and revolution, through snow and ice and remoteness, to discover the human face of Siberia. I loved this book.” —Paul Theroux

Soul Hunters

Soul Hunters
Author: Rane Willerslev
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 246
Release: 2007-08-24
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0520252179

Basing his study on firsthand experience with Yukaghir hunters, Rane Willerslev focuses on the practical implications of living in a 'hall of mirrors' world, one inhabited by humans, animals and spirits, all of whom are understood to be endless mimetic doubles of one another.

As Far as My Feet Will Carry Me

As Far as My Feet Will Carry Me
Author: Josef M. Bauer
Publisher: Constable
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2011-08-04
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1780332866

Originally published in 1955, this must be one of the most dramatic adventures of our time. Clemens Forell, a German soldier, was sentenced to 25 years of forced labour in a Siberian lead mine after the Second World War. Rebelling against the brutality of the camp, Forell staged a daring escape, enduring an 8000-mile journey across the trackless wastes of Siberia, in some of the most treacherous and inhospitable conditions on earth. Bauer's writing brilliantly evokes Forell's desperation in the prison camp, and his struggle for survival and terror of recapture as he makes his way towards the Persian frontier and freedom.

Brothers on the Bashkaus

Brothers on the Bashkaus
Author: Eugene Buchanan
Publisher: Fulcrum Publishing
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2007
Genre: Travel
ISBN: 9781555916084

A harrowing adventure that follows a group of Westerners on a paddling trip down the Bashkaus River in Siberia. Ultimately, they find that the river creates a common bond regardless of race, religion, or nationality--a bond in which a group of strangers truly come together as brothers.

Last of the Breed

Last of the Breed
Author: Louis L'Amour
Publisher: Bantam
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2005-03-29
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 055389935X

“For sheer adventure L’Amour is in top form.”—Kirkus Reviews Here is the kind of authentically detailed epic novel that has become Louis L’Amour’s hallmark. It is the compelling story of U.S. Air Force Major Joe Mack, a man born out of time. When his experimental aircraft is forced down in Russia and he escapes a Soviet prison camp, he must call upon the ancient skills of his Indian forebears to survive the vast Siberian wilderness. Only one route lies open to Mack: the path of his ancestors, overland to the Bering Strait and across the sea to America. But in pursuit is a legendary tracker, the Yakut native Alekhin, who knows every square foot of the icy frontier—and who knows that to trap his quarry he must think like a Sioux.

Lost in the Taiga

Lost in the Taiga
Author: Vasiliĭ Peskov
Publisher: Doubleday Books
Total Pages: 300
Release: 1994
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

The sole surviving family member, the daughter Agafia, lives by herself in the Lykov family cabin to this day.

The Consolations of the Forest

The Consolations of the Forest
Author: Sylvain Tesson
Publisher: Rizzoli Publications
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2013-10-01
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 0847841405

A journalist embarks on the adventure of a lifetime—living in a remote cabin in Siberia—in this Thoreau-esque meditation on escaping the chaos of modern life and rediscovering the luxury of solitude. “…wry, exuberant, and a perfect balm for anyone who dreams of running away to the middle of nowhere.” —San Francisco Chronicle No stranger to inhospitable places, journalist Sylvain Tesson exiles himself to a wooden cabin on Siberia’s Lake Baikal—a full day’s hike from any “neighbor”—with his thoughts, his books, a couple of dogs, and many bottles of vodka for company. Writing from February to July, he shares his deep appreciation for the harsh but beautiful land, the resilient men and women who populate it, and the bizarre and tragic history that has given Siberia an almost mythological place in the imagination. Rich with observation, introspection, and the good humor necessary to laugh at his own folly, Tesson’s memoir is about the ultimate freedom of owning your own time. Only in the hands of a gifted storyteller can an experiment in isolation become an exceptional adventure accessible to all. By recording his impressions in the face of silence, his struggles in a hostile environment, his hopes, doubts, and moments of pure joy in communion with nature, Tesson makes a decidedly out-of-the-ordinary experience relatable. The awe and joy are contagious, and one comes away with the comforting knowledge that “as long as there is a cabin deep in the woods, nothing is completely lost.”