Siberia, Siberia

Valentin Rasputin, born in 1937, is "one of the Soviet Union's most brilliant writers," according to Bonnie Carey in World Literature Today. He has always lived and worked in Irkutsk, near Lake Baikal in Siberia, and became known for his realistic depiction of village life, and the absence of ideology in his work. Siberia is a cold, almost unlivable wilderness, a by-word for isolation and punishment. In recent decades parts of it have been despoiled by rapacious mining activities. This nonfiction account of his beloved land is at times beautifully descriptive, but is also an angry assertion of the identity of a region exploited by the policies of central government. Translated by Margaret Winchell and Gerald Mikkelson.