Red Odyssey

This book is an account of the author's journey through the Muslim republics of the former USSR. Travelling at first by car and, when that disintegrates, by any means at hand, Akchurin reveals a Soviet Union few Western travellers have ever seen, a country on the edge of civil war, where ethnic tensions are leading increasingly to violence and gangs of thugs terrorize outsiders like himself. As he travels he visits old towns and new haunts, friends and family, poets, artists and scholars who have become politicians in the new politicised nation.