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I've just this minute finished one of the most beauitufl and disturbing books I've ever read - In Siberia, by Colin Thubron.
It is a haunting description of a lengthy journey through this least known of inhabited lands, just before the close of the last century. The strange and violent history of Siberia, from the Cossacks through the Soviet Union to the desolation of the time he writes about is brought to life. It is heavy, and bleak, but beautiful and strangely fascinating, just like the land it describes. Here, for instance, is the opening paragraph:
"The ice-fields are crossed forever by a man in chains. In the farther distance, perhaps, a herd of reindeer drifts, or a hunter makes a shadow on the snow. But that is all. Siberia: it fills one twelfth of the land-mass of the whole earth, yet this is all it leaves for certain in the mind. A bleak beauty, and an indelible fear."
And one short sentence which leapt out at me, and is an experience many travellers know:
"The menu is treacherous with local dishes"
The last 15 pages of the book, however, are harrowing in the extreme, dealing as they do with Kolyma, most notorious of all the Gulag regions. The sense of facing up to the impossible truth, to speaking softly but with great clarity down the corridors of history of the nightmare which lies beneath the covering snows, is the same as that in the famous footage of Jacob Bronowski at Auschwitz.
Read this book. It is exceptional.
It is a haunting description of a lengthy journey through this least known of inhabited lands, just before the close of the last century. The strange and violent history of Siberia, from the Cossacks through the Soviet Union to the desolation of the time he writes about is brought to life. It is heavy, and bleak, but beautiful and strangely fascinating, just like the land it describes. Here, for instance, is the opening paragraph:
"The ice-fields are crossed forever by a man in chains. In the farther distance, perhaps, a herd of reindeer drifts, or a hunter makes a shadow on the snow. But that is all. Siberia: it fills one twelfth of the land-mass of the whole earth, yet this is all it leaves for certain in the mind. A bleak beauty, and an indelible fear."
And one short sentence which leapt out at me, and is an experience many travellers know:
"The menu is treacherous with local dishes"
The last 15 pages of the book, however, are harrowing in the extreme, dealing as they do with Kolyma, most notorious of all the Gulag regions. The sense of facing up to the impossible truth, to speaking softly but with great clarity down the corridors of history of the nightmare which lies beneath the covering snows, is the same as that in the famous footage of Jacob Bronowski at Auschwitz.
Read this book. It is exceptional.
