- Hardcover: 368 pages
- Publisher: Scribner; New edition edition (3 April 2000)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0684851806
- ISBN-13: 978-0684851808
- Product Dimensions: 19.2 x 13 x 2.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,428,449 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
The miseries of life under Communism were such that most intelligent people took to drink--not just to the odd social glass, but to mad obsessive drinking of the sort that leads less to hangovers than to falling asleep on frozen streets. Exiled journalist Vitaliev, no stranger to the bottle himself, took on the task of finding whether alcoholic consumption had continued at Soviet levels in the newly capitalist former Soviet bloc. A purist in his pursuit of plainest of plain vodkas, he gallantly consumes Czech beer and Bulgarian wine and meditates extensively on the mentalities that go with different sorts of drinking--he is equally and entertainingly rude about lager louts and wine bores. The book is also a farewell to alcohol--Vitaliev, already suffering from a stomach ulcer, decided after all this that perhaps drinking was simply a bad idea. And, as he journeys around Central and Eastern Europe, people in bars tell him stories--it is perhaps above all in these casually told and not wholly relevant funny stories that he puts together most convincingly his picture of a world that has got out from under an oppressive system without really knowing what comes next. --Roz Kaveney
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Product Description
Can the former Communist countries of Eastern Europe adjust to the demands of capitalism and adapt to the cultural shift it requires? The collapse of the Russian economy suggests not, but Vitali Vitaliev reveals a population defiant and colourful in the face of, sometimes, terrible hardship.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Paperback
"Travel without tears". A master travel writer - not only interesting but witty! He makes you want to visit the places yourself. A very amusing book.
Format:Hardcover
A master travel writer - not only interesting but witty!
He makes you want to visit the places yourself. A very amusing book.
He makes you want to visit the places yourself. A very amusing book.
Format:Hardcover
This book makes me thirsty. It makes me want to taste wines, and to slam neat vodkas and talk politics.
Vitaliev's experiences with the wretched Australians are amusing. I always wanted to go to the Oktoberfest, so when I get round to it I'll get heavy on the avoision of these beings.
Yes, avoision is a word. As in tax avoision.
Vague memories come back of the Clive James show, although can't quite remember what Vitali said, but remember James squishing his face up and getting a real kick out of the name of his Moscow correspondent, only just managing to say it without imploding.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Drunken view distorted by the bottom of a glass
The Economist once wrote that some communists are nostalgic for a time when poverty & injustice were more equally distributed. Read more
Published on 12 Dec 2002 by Gareth Brown
Intoxicating stuff
Extraordinarily funny account of travels in Eastern Europe, seen through the bottom of a vodka glass. Read more
Published on 30 May 1999
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