No charming folk customs here, just the hard facts of life in the frozen Russian north.
A writer for the Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza reports on life at the harrowing margins of contemporary Russian society.
The goal—driving solo 13,000 kilometers from Moscow to Vladivostok in a Russian Jeep—sounds like a travel stunt, complete with bandits, militia men, frigid overnights in the cab with the engine running for heat. But Hugo-Bader is a journalist by trade and travelogue is only the pretext for this book, which takes a stark, shocking look at Russia’s lower depths, its homeless people, alcoholics, drug addicts, sex workers and HIV sufferers, among others. Hugo-Bader’s best writing occurs after he finally leaves Moscow and hits the road, passing through off-the-charts places in eastern Russia and especially Siberia. Along the way, he visited with the inventor of the Kalashnikov assault rifle in Izhevsk, capital of the Russian arms industry; explored a still-lethal nuclear weapons test site near the Kazakhstan border; and interviewed shamans and a self-styled reincarnation of Jesus Christ. Most striking is the tale of the Siberian taiga reindeer herders, members of nearly extinct aboriginal tribes who have been embarking on self-decimation by alcohol and suicide. Amid the brutality, the author found moments of joy and genuine humanity. “Time and again,” he writes, “after ten or more hours of lonely driving across wild wastelands I felt as if I were part of this machine…it was an uncanny feeling, so in my thoughts I had started to humanize it, talk to it, call it names, pay it compliments, saying it had a lovely voice, for example. Because it did.”
No charming folk customs here, just the hard facts of life in the frozen Russian north.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-61902-011-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Counterpoint
Review Posted Online: Aug. 5, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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