A SUNDAY TIMES BEST PAPERBACK OF 2021
* Shortlisted for the 2021 Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year prize
* A critically-acclaimed Sunday Times, Spectator and Independent Book of 2020
* Now with colour photography by Michael Turek
'Richly absorbing... An impressive exploration of Siberia's terrifying past.' Guardian
'Evocative and wonderfully original.' Colin Thubron
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Siberia's expansive history is traditionally one of exiles, bitter cold and suffering. Yet there is another tale to tell.
Dotted throughout this remote and beautiful landscape are pianos created during the boom years of the nineteenth century. They tell the story of how, ever since entering Russian culture under the influence of Catherine the Great, piano music has run through the country like blood. How these pianos made the journey into this snow-bound wilderness in the first place is remarkable. That they might be capable of making music in such a hostile landscape feels like a miracle.
The Lost Pianos of Siberia is an absorbing story about a piano hunt - a quixotic quest through two centuries of Russian history and eight time zones stretching across an eleventh of the world's land surface. It reveals not only an unexpected musical legacy, but profound and brave humanity in the last place on earth you might expect to find it.
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What readers are saying about The Lost Pianos of Siberia:
***** 'You know a book's good when, on finishing it, you just want to start again.'
***** 'Beautifully written, full of compelling anecdotes celebrating Siberia's extraordinary history.'
***** 'The most unusual and intelligent way to tell a travel story.'
Rezensionen / Stimmen
An extraordinary encounter with a wildly fascinating and astonishingly ill-known region... This is a wonderful book. * Sunday Times * The ultimate quest for the oddest objects - pianos - in the most unlikely place - Siberia. But Roberts makes it much more than that, an elegant and nuanced journey through literature, through history, through music, murder and incarceration and revolution, through snow and ice and remoteness, to discover the human face of Siberia. I loved this book. * Paul Theroux * An impressive exploration of Siberia's terrifying past. * Guardian * An exuberant, eccentric journey through Russian vastness, European history and Russian culture, The Lost Pianos of Siberia is a quixotic quest, a picaresque travel adventure and a strange forgotten story, all wrapped into one fascinating book. * Simon Sebag-Montefiore * What shines through in this book is Roberts' genuine, humane affection for and fascination with the people she meets in Siberia. * Literary Review * A stunning example of modern historical travel writing * Independent * A richly observed cultural history... thrilling. * New Statesman * Fascinating account of Siberia's horrific legacy told with great verve... Roberts is a wonderfully lyrical writer. * The Observer * Beautifully written... A unique short history of Russia from Catherine the Great to Putin... A sense of the extraordinary marks every page. * History Today * Captures Siberia's wildness, but favours its enchantments. * Times Literary Supplement *
Sprache
Verlagsort
Verlagsgruppe
Transworld Publishers Ltd
Dateigröße
ISBN-13
978-1-4735-4349-2 (9781473543492)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Klassifikation
Sophy Roberts is an award-winning British journalist, and a regular contributor to FT Weekend. Her critically acclaimed first book, The Lost Pianos of Siberia, was a Sunday Times Book of the Year in 2020, and went on to be published in eight more languages. Her second book, A Training School for Elephants, is another unusual quest, threading lost history with modern reportage in India, Iraq, DRC, Tanzania and Belgium. Following an 1879 journey that four elephants from Pune made to Africa's Great Lakes, it is a reckoning with colonial ambitions gone berserk.
