Customer Reviews

Lost Cosmonaut: Observations of an Anti-Tourist

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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.

This book was an excellent read for those who enjoy imagining yourself appearing on the other side of the world with little or no money. It takes the reader on a visual and personal narrative of exploring obscure regions of Russia. Starting with a more well known region it trails down to the Russified plains of things that used to be. If you enjoy non-fiction reads like Hot House or other honest journeys into abandoned places you will enjoy this book.

Kalder's 'Lost Cosmonaut' veers between serious and flippant in its treatment of four semi-autonomous Russian republics. He covers Muslims and Stalinists in Tatarstan, pagans and wedding agencies in Mari-El, exiled Buddhists, chess and Chuck Norris in Kalmykia, the Kalashinakov and his own unwillingness to become an 'expert' in Udmurtia. Kalder treats everything with a dry, black Scottish humor, occasionally accompanied by an outburst of entertaining obscenities, but at no point does he patronize the locals with either a scientific chin-stroking wonder or a National Geographic photographic sensibility. Deliberately distanced from the people he meets, the narrative is ironic enough to carry off occasional (and obvious) outrageous lies, like hallucinations in the Russian steppe. Kalder describes life in these republics as a combination of chance, boredom, cold obstruction, hope and self-creation, and the book reads like that itself. If you just want a laugh, it works, if you want to know about these people and places, it works, but if you want something more, it excels.

Kalder reminds readers that there exists a world beyond the most desirable tourist destinations. So many people experience the quintessential Italian vacation to eat gelato twice a day. There is nothing wrong with being a tourist and following a mapped-out itinerary of things people want to see, but when you're traveling, you're truly seeing the world. Kalder travels to places that people have forgotten. They aren't meant for tourists, but they exist. The people in the book matter as much as the local people you would meet on any vacation, and the histories of their nations are worth learning about.

I loved this book, so much that I read Kalder's next book (Strange Telescopes).

A wandering Scotsman alternates between flitting amusements and serious musings. This darkly comic travelogue is vastly entertaining and a rare treat. I couldn't put it down and read it in less than a day. Well worth your time if you enjoy macabre humor and random adventures in nowhere land.

This might be one of the most enjoyable entries in the growing crop of "anti-tourist" books that have lately been sprucing up the travel genre. Instead of genteel tales of scenery and fine foods that can be enjoyed by rich Americans in exotic tourist locations where your only interaction with the natives is when they refill your wineglass, here we get to know the real people in places that no tourist would ever think of visiting. Daniel Kalder decided to investigate some of the Russian Federation's forlorn and downtrodden ethnic republics. Most westerners will only be aware of Chechnya, where a non-Russian ethnic group has been trying to shake off centuries of Russian and Soviet domination. But Russia actually has dozens of these semi-autonomous ethnic republics, populated by forgotten tribes living in cultural wastelands. Kalder traveled to four of these - Tatarstan, Kalmykia, Mari El, and the wonderfully named Udmurtia. (Tellingly, none of those places, that millions call home, made it through my spell check software.)

Kalder reports on boring anti-tourist activities, obscure relics, dying cultures, and dreary post-industrial landscapes, while spending his time with regular folks who are flabbergasted at seeing a foreign tourist. In addition to Kalder's swift and tongue-in-cheek writing style, the great thing about this book is his ruminations on the insignificant lives of regular people in forgotten locations. He really brings the travails of the world's geopolitical misfits and losers to light in compelling ways, with some surprising glimmers of deep philosophical thought. Unfortunately, the book is quite uneven, mostly because of Kalder's often coarse sense of humor, and his frequent use of imaginary passages, which often makes the reader wonder if he's trying to be serious or if he's poking fun at his subjects. And at times, Kalder's anti-tourist ennui and tangential thinking style weighs down on the reader. But overall, this book is a real treat for those who like to learn about obscure lands and peoples, and for those who are tired of reading travel stories about pampered people enjoying the good life in predictable locales. [~doomsdayer520~]

In which the author, a Scottish Russophile, goes to four of the more obscure former Soviet Republics under the pretense of learning about the fading cultures of people who are being assimilated into (and overrun by) the Russian cultural juggernaut. The idea of going to places that have very little to offer tourists and write about them as if they were major destinations is interesting, but he undercuts himself constantly, allowing himself to be put off by people who could help him find these people, making blanket observations on very little data, and being generally an unreliable narrator; for example, he spends an inordinate amount of time watching other people have sex without explaining why or what-for. (If he was going to these places primarily to score with ethnic chicks, that's fine, but I wish he'd have just come correct about it.)

If you're looking for reasons to visit Kalmykia, Mari El, Udmurtia or Tatarstan, you'll find precious few of them in "Lost Cosmonaut." Kalder revels in the bleakness and homogeneity of the lack of culture in each place, and he doesn't follow most leads that would show him where the last vestiges of the original local culture actually are. But just because he openly admits he's no ethnographer doesn't mean it's not still a disappointment when a book that's ostensibly about ethnography doesn't really signify, even in some ironic sense.

There's a great idea in this, and Kalder is not a bad storyteller. I just wish "Lost Cosmonaut" had a little more story for him to tell.

Daniel Kalder provides a counter-culture--and possibly counter-intelligent--depiction of the former Soviet block countries. Oftentimes, while telling and perhaps apt, Kalder seems to evoke the hopelessness rather than the potential of a location. He openly declares the desolate nature of these places with mild regard for the attractions which they do offer. In particular, the oddities across which Kalder happens seem to justify a militant claim to being "am Arsch der Welt." He claims to be happy with such an odd quest, yet struggles to convince his own traveling companions of why he wants to do this. There is an "indier than thou" feel to this book which distances the reader from the already enigmatic Kalder. Granted, this may be the case. The reader must then ask: if the point of this book is to find nothing and rattle on about the glorious "emptiness" which Kalder hopes to find, do I really want to spend 300 pages of my life on it? In any case, it's amusing.

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 their lack of mainstream 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 Kazakhstan, 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.

There is a toxic account in this book mocking two great scholars, the brothers Maksim and Konstantin Sitnikov (a noted translator of E A Poe), whose courteous hospitality in Mari El is returned by Kalder with crude unwarranted mockery. What's more, this Scotsman's wretched attempts at English Grammar are risible; see page 169 ('... he was bored of that now.' Should be: '... he was bored with that now.'); and, on page 229, use of 'mitre' (bishop's hat) when Kalder in fact refers to Alexei's staff, like a bishop's 'crozier' ... in short, Kalder is not only an ingrate (when he was the Sitnikovs' guest) but is as careless with his manners as he is with his prose. Where was the editor? Faber, publishers of distinction, should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves.