Overview
"A captivating read notable for off-the-cuff candor and measured,
eloquent prose."—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
A funny and revealing travelogue of Kazakhstan, a country rich with wild tulips, oil, nomads who hunt with golden eagles, and a disappearing landlocked sea.
Closed to foreigners under Tsar and Soviet rule, Kazakhstan has remained largely hidden from the world, a remarkable feat for a country the size of Western Europe. Few would guess that Kazakhstan—a blank in Westerners' collective geography—turns out to be diverse, tolerant, and surprisingly modern, the country that gave the world apples, trousers, and even, perhaps, King Arthur.
Christopher Robbins enjoyed unprecedented access to the Kazakh president while crafting this travelogue, and he relates a story by turns hilarious and grim. He finds Eminem-worship by a shrinking Aral Sea, hears the Kazakh John Lennon play in a dusty desert town, joins nomads hunting eagles, eats boiled sheep's head (a delicacy), and explores some of the most beautiful, unspoiled places on earth. Observant and culturally attuned, Robbins is a master stylist in the tradition of travel writing as literature, a companion to V. S. Naipaul and Paul Theroux.
Editorials
Library Journal
Most people associate Kazakhstan with the character Sacha Baron Cohen popularized in the 2006 film Borat , but Robbins's (The Empress of Ireland ) delightful and masterful travelog reveals that it is in fact a country rich in history, natural beauty, and, perhaps most important, tolerance. On a flight to Moscow, Robbins chances upon a man from Arkansas en route to Kazakhstan to meet his future bride. Intrigued by the man's assertion that apples originated in Kazakhstan, Robbins sets off to see if this is indeed the case. Once there, not only does he discover that it is, but he also learns that Kazakhstan is a country of wild tulips, oil, minerals, 46 principal religions, and a seemingly equal number of ethnic groups. But the picture is not all rosy. Robbins writes about the gulags, the ecological disaster of the Aral Sea, and the scorched earth of nuclear test sites under Soviet rule. Despite these discoveries, however, he manages to make this an overall hopeful book by combining grave topics with less grave ones and adding a good dose of wit. This book will do for Kazakhstan what John Gimlette's At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig did for Paraguay. Highly recommended for all libraries.-Lee Arnold, Historical Soc. of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
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