On today's program, which first aired last fall, we hear from the longtime New Yorker Magazine writer and bestselling author Ian Frazier, whose latest book (now in paperback) is "Travels in Siberia," which the San Francisco Chronicle has called "a masterpiece of nonfiction writing --- tragic, bizarre, and funny." Further, as one critic of this book has noted in The New York Times Book Review: "['Travels in Siberia' is] an uproarious, sometimes dark yarn filled with dubious meals, broken-down vehicles, abandoned slave-labor camps, and ubiquitous statues of Lenin --- 'On the Road' meets 'The Gulag Archipelago'.... As he demonstrated in 'Great Plains,' Frazier is the most amiable of obsessives [as] he peels away Russia's stolid veneer to reveal the quirkiness and humanity beneath.... Frazier has the gumption and sense of wonder shared by every great travel writer, from Bruce Chatwin to Redmond O'Hanlon, as well as the ability to make us see how the most trivial or ephemeral detail is part of the essential texture of a place.... [This is an] endlessly fascinating tale."
Ian Frazier and His "Travels in Siberia" (Encore presentation.)
