Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2079876 in Books
• Published on: 1987
• Binding: Hardcover
• 649 pages

From Publishers Weekly
After his novel Oblomov brought him fame, Goncharov was invited by the czarist government to join in a globe-girdling voyage, the aim of which was to open Japan to Russian trading. This 752-page log of his expedition on the three-masted schooner Pallada is travel writing in the grand tradition, mingling close-up observation, adventure and history. Strategically, the voyage was a failure. The Russians were first rebuffed, later treated more cordially after Commodore Perry's U.S. mission had softened the Japanese. But the Crimean War broke out and Goncharov was abandoned in remotest Siberia, to make his way back home on his own. Presented here in its first complete English translation, the travelogue records his experiences in South Africa where tensions between Dutch, English and blacks simmered; a stopover in England, where he found life too mechanical; firsthand impressions of British colonialism in Shanghai, Singapore's seedy opium dens, drinking wine on Madeira, much else. Goncharov's gift as a master stylist comes through in translation.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
To his friends' surprise, Russian writer Goncharov, a landlubber nearly as inert as the hero of his Oblomov (1859), chose to realise his boyhood dream of seeing faraway places by serving as Admiral Putyatin's secretary on an 1853 expedition aimed at opening Japan to Russian trade. Though here often clumsily translated and capriciously transliterated, Frigate Pallada remains a classic that offers the armchair traveler the reward of accompanying a sharp observer to a world remote in space and time, a world of sailing ships, carriages and coolies, and colonialism. Goncharov's eye for salient detail and local color permeates his descriptions of the months at sea, the varied landfallsPortsmouth, Madeira, the Cape of Good Hope, Nagasaki, Manila, Shanghai, the Ryukyusand the return trip by land across Siberia. Mary F. Zirin, Altadena, Cal.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Language Notes
Text: English, Russian (translation)

Customer Reviews

Esoteric but interesting account of 19th Century travels.
Goncharov was the secretary to the Vice Admiral in charge of a Russian fact-finding tour of the world which began in 1952 and ended over 2 years later. His observations, especially of the English, are accurate and sometimes humorous and colorful. He went on to win acclaim with Oblomov. This is a good opportunity to read earlier writings of a great Russian novelist.