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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Making Great the Bad Places,
By
This review is from: Lost Cosmonaut (Paperback)
Did you know there was a Buddhist republic in Europe? And a desert for that matter? Or a pagan republic? Russia stretches from Eastern Europe to Alaska and contains many semi-autonomous republics - they have their own presidents, their own TV stations, their own heroes and legends and, of course, their own corruption, brutality, and cities dedicated to chess. They just don't have tourists.
Kalder sets out as an 'anti-tourist' visiting these undesirable places and casting a realistic eye over them and their prospects; yet the same eye also contains a deep empathy towards these people and their invisible countries. Kalder's black humour carries the book from history to personal encounter (or non-encounter) with ease, and his revelations broaden out the view well beyond four republics you've never heard of. Kalder states at the beginning that 'travel rarely broadens the mind', and travel books even more rarely do so. But this one does, brilliantly.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Very disappointing indeed for its unreliability and its puerile deprecation of each locale,
This review is from: Lost Cosmonaut (Paperback)
I was really looking forward to reading Daniel Kalder's LOST COSMONAUT, where the Scottish author travels to four little-known parts of Russia seeking out places precisely for a their lack of tourist appeal. As a linguist studying minority languages of Russia, I have been to some of the places Kalder describes and found them enchanting. I hoped that his book might show people the considerable challenges minority populations face in contemporary Russia. And as a passionate traveler who wants to see as much as possible before it all changes, I thought that Kalder's "anti-tourist" perspective would be agreeable. Unfortunately, I found the book very disappointing, and often downright infuriating.
In the first part of the book Kalder tells of his 2001 visit to Kazan, capital of the Russian republic of Tatarstan. While the author does do a good job of informing the reader of some little-known aspects of Tatar history and culture, his claim that this is a weird and obscure republic rings false. Kazan has long been one of the most heavily-touristed parts of Russia, with tour buses full of Germans and Japanese pulling up daily in front of its Kremlin. And though the author adopts a tone of being scared of going to far-away Tatarstan, in an aside he mentions a long residence in Almaty, the capital of Tatarstan, so surely he was really used to seeing remote areas. Things just get worse in the following chapters, where Kalder calls the locals by various insults. LOST COSMONAUT is not a travelogue which will better inform you about some delightful places that you might not otherwise hear of. Rather, it's a book of humour that tries to make you laugh at the expense of the good local people who don't deserve such mockey. A blurb on the cover of one printing calls him "Bill Bryson with Tourette's" and, indeed, Kalder has the same lack of respect for the locals that one finds in Bryson's work. Furthermore, there is outright fiction in the book. Kalder warns one in the beginning that the "anti-tourist" likes lies just as much as truth. But if someone is buying a book on the premise that it gives a report of remote parts of Russia, one wants to read the truth instead of Kalder's inventions (a banner warning away the "white man" in Kazan, a Mari fellow snorting cocaine). And the author totally squanders the opportunity to alert the West to the disturbing treatment of minorities in Putin's Russia. I cannot recommend Kalder's book, except if someone is already on their way to one of these places and wants to know at least some information about them, however untrustworthy. A better understanding of political and social issues in Mari El and Udmurtia can be had from Taagapera's The Finno-Ugric Republics and the Russian State.
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