As mysterious as its beautiful, as forbidding as it is populated with
warm-hearted people, Syberia is a land few Westerners know, and even
fewer will ever visit. Traveling alone, by train, boat, car, and on
foot, Colin Thubron traversed this vast territory, talking to everyone
he encountered about the state of the beauty, whose natural resources
have been savagely exploited for decades; a terrain tainted by nuclear
waste but filled with citizens who both welcomed him and fed
him--despite their own tragic poverty. From Mongoloia to the Artic
Circle, from Rasputin's village in the west through tundra, taiga,
mountains, lakes, rivers, and finally to a derelict Jewish community in
the country's far eastern reaches, Colin Thubron penetrates a
little-understood part of the world in a way that no writer ever has.