In Siberia

by Colin Thubron

First published 1999

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4.3(347)

Colin Thubron travels some fifteen thousand miles across Siberia in the unsettled years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, using trains, roads, rivers and improvised transport to reach cities and remote settlements. He listens to Orthodox believers, Buddhists, shamans, old Communists, workers and isolated communities while poverty, depopulation and institutional decay reshape daily life.

The present continually opens onto older Siberian histories. Thubron visits places associated with the murder of Nicholas II and his family and with Grigori Rasputin, and he encounters the legacy of imperial exile, Stalinist prisons, forced development and Soviet military power. Ancient graves, Lake Baikal and revived religions extend the book beyond a record of post-Soviet hardship into an exploration of how Siberia carries successive layers of conquest, punishment, belief and memory.