Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #95462 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04-21
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 304 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780977743384
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Booklist
Robbins’ engaging travelogue is an educational antidote to misperceptions about the country spread by the movie Borat (2006). Robbins, the author of The Empress of Ireland (2005), among other works, intermingles tales of his own adventures in Kazakhstan with stories of the country’s Soviet history and various rulers. Over the course of his travels, Robbins speaks with a local philosopher, fends off a prostitute, and, of course, visits the country’s apple orchards. He learns that tales of King Arthur may well come from Kazakh legends, and he journeys through the country with Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev. From describing his visits to Kazakhstan’s wealth of oil fields to hearing a perfect John Lennon impersonation during his explorations, Robbins brings to light a complex and fascinating Kazakhstan unknown to most Westerners. --Katherine Boyle

Review
"A delightful and masterful travelogue. . . . combining grave topics with less grave ones and adding a good dose of wit. . . . Highly recommended." -- Library Journal (starred review)

"A superlative addition to the literature of travel." -- The Observer (UK)

"Robbins's travelogue enthusiastically and infectiously blends history, observation, and mini biographies. . . . A captivating read notable for off-the-cuff candor and measured, eloquent prose." -- Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"[This] engaging travelogue is an educational antidote to misperceptions about the country spread by the movie Borat (2006. . . . From describing his visits to Kazakhstan's wealth of oil fields to hearing a perfect John Lennon impersonation during his explorations, Robbins brings to light a complex and fascinating Kazakhstan unknown to most Westerners." -- Booklist

About the Author
Christopher Robbins is the author of five non-fiction books, including the award-winning The Empress of Ireland. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, The New York Times, The Times Magazine (UK), the Guardian (UK), and many others. He lives in London.

Customer Reviews

Great book
Unless you are interested in Soviet history or Kazakhstan already, this book would probably not be that interesting. Since I am both a keen student of the former and relatively interested in the latter, I found this book fascinating.
I have been to Kazakhstan two years ago (on business), but as is usually the case with brief visits, I only saw what's obvious and superficial. This book was perfect as it dug deeper and explained a lot of what I saw.
The author does a good job keeping it lively and interesting, his style remind me of Bill Bryce's travelogues. My only note (and I read the British edition, it may have been changed in the US) is that the book is somewhat rambling. The author follows a personal narrative ("I did this, saw that") but it jumps around in a non-linear fashion, so you are not exactly sure when things are taking place and what season it is. And some poor editing as well, I think the story about the President's youth is repeated a couple times.

Lastly - the attitude towards the President seems overly diffident. I agree with the author that the country owes most of its recent progress to him, but I think a more neutral tone could be achieved. Given the history of Western writers being smitten by Soviet dictators (I am implying the analogy), I think one should tread carefully.

Great Introduction to Kazakhstan
I have been interested in Kazakhstan since I spent a summer there almost ten years ago. Borat notwithstanding, most Westerners are unfamiliar with the region: this was the ONLY book about Central Asia among thousands of travel and guidebooks at my local mass-market bookstore.

Robbins' writing is a great introduction to Kazakhstan for westerners, as he reviews the country's history and relates amusing anecdotes from his travels. Most western literature on Kazakhstan is dryly academic or political in nature, and focuses on the country's problems and the need for international involvement; this is the first book I've read, that, while acknowledging the challenges, presents a positive view of Kazakhstan's present and future.

As E. Salimova points out in her review, the book is filled with western bias, and only an introduction - but it is a positive introduction, and one that I hope will whet western appetites for greater understanding of the region.

Amusing and educational: it fed my desire to visit Kazakhstan
This is a strange mixture of a travelogue and an anecdotal history of Kazakhstan. Robbins characterizes Kazakhstan as an ancient country which has been long forgotten in the West, and he seeks to rediscover the diversity of its past and present.

He describes his travels from the wild steppes of the central country, to the old capital at Almaty, to the nightclubs of the brash new modern capital at Astana. As we travel, he provides interesting historical side stories on the Kazakhstan exiles of Trotsky, Dostoyevsky and Solzhenitsyn; on Sakharov's witnessing of the first Soviet H-bomb tests; and on the horrific forced labor camps of Stalin's Gulag. He also recounts many other fragments of its history, not least that indeed "apples are from Kazakhstan".

As part of his visit, Robbins had multiple interviews with President Nazarbayev and was allowed to travel with him during a tour of some of Kazakhstan's remoter areas. Nazarbayev's quoted reminiscences are interesting, especially around the fall of the Soviet Union and the birth of independent Kazakhstan (although like all politician's memoirs, his words should probably be read cautiously). Robbins has clearly benefited from Nazarbayev's help and in return he is notably delicate in addressing potentially awkward issues. There have been allegations of significant high level corruption in Kazakhstan and of the forcible discouraging of political opposition, but these are not topics that Robbins dwells on.

On the plus side, Robbins has clearly fallen in love with Kazakhstan and he paints a broadly sympathetic picture of a country that has a difficult past, a beautiful but often barren landscape, a climate of hot summers and extreme winters. He presents a country which is relatively tolerant and, with the benefit of oil wealth, is growing prosperous and (by the standards of the region) relatively open.

This is more of a travelogue than a deep history or social analysis, but I found it consistently interesting and educational, and often amusing.