| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Plus, get an extra £5 Gift Certificate when you trade in books worth £10 or more before June 30, 2012. Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. |
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
From the reviews of The Bronski House:
‘Magnificent… a Polish Wild Swans meets Dr Zhivago, written in some of the most exquisite prose in the genre since the death of Chatwin.’
William Dalrymple, Sunday Times Books of the Year
‘A tragic story, beautifully told.’
Colin Thubron, Daily Telegraph Books of the Year
‘The book I’ve savoured most this year.’
John Fowles, Spectator Books of the Year
Product Description
The new book from the acclaimed author of The Crossing Place and The Bronski House.
In Moscow, a man points on a map to the place where he was born. He is a Doukhobor, a ‘spirit-wrestler’, a member of a group of radical Russian sectarians. He is pointing to a village beyond the southern steppe, at the far south of the old Russian empire: ‘I was born here,’ he says. ‘On the edge of the world.’
So begins Philip Marsden’s Russian journey – perhaps the most penetrating account of Russian life since the Soviet Union’s collapse made travel possible again. In villages unseen by outsiders since before the revolution, he encounters men and women of fabulous courage, larger than life, dazed by the century’s turbulence. By turns wise, devout, comic, they seem to have stepped straight from the pages of Turgenev, Gogol and Babel. Marsden meets such figures as the Yezidi Sheikh of Sheikhs, an exiled Georgian prince and a cast of passionate scholars, stooping survivors of the gulags, strutting Cossacks and extreme, isolated sects of Milk-Drinkers and Spirit-Wrestlers.
The Spirit-Wrestlers peels away the grey facade of post-Soviet Russia and reveals a people as committed as ever to answering that great Tolstoyan question: how a man should live. Even more than in The Bronski House and The Crossing Place, Philip Marsden shows that behind the horrors of the Soviet years the human spirit remained triumphant. In so doing, he shows himself to be one of the most exciting and original travel writers of his generation.
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Philip Marsden writes excellently using his pen as a paintbrush - painting unique and lively images of everyday life in Russia amongst mystics and spirit-wrestlers. This book is written with love and magic. It is in itself - an small miracle.
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
