Good travel writers seek to avoid the big picture and national politics and write about everyday people. This Tayler does superbly. He mostly skirts the dreary story of Russia's post-Communist governance and tells the little stories instead. We meet Enker, a ticket lady in a museum, who gives a firsthand account of wartime deportation and virtual genocide of her people, the Kalmyks. Everywhere are alcoholism and depair.
Every place is backward and bored.
Tayler writes that a love and fascination for Russia spurred him. He never quite explains. In a sense, he tells his story too well. Carroll Bogert, communications director of Human Rights Watch, was Newsweek's Moscow bureau chief.