White Fever: A Journey to the Frozen Heart of Siberia - Softcover

Hugo-Bader, Jacek

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1619020114 ISBN 13: 9781619020115

Publisher: Counterpoint, 2012

Synopsis

No one in their right mind travels across Siberia in the middle of winter in a modified Russian jeep, with only a CD player (which breaks on the first day) for company. But Jacek Hugo-Bader is no ordinary traveler. As a fiftieth birthday present to himself, he sets out to drive from Moscow to Vladivostok, traversing a continent that is two and a half times bigger than America, awash with bandits, and not always fully equipped with roads. But if his mission sounds deranged it is in keeping with the land he is visiting. For Siberia is slowly dying or, more accurately, killing itself. This is a traumatized post-Communist landscape peopled by the homeless and the hopeless: alcoholism is endemic, as are suicides, murders, and deaths from AIDS . As he gets to know these communities and speaks to the people, Hugo-Bader discovers a great deal of tragedy, but there is also dark humor to be found amongst the reindeer shepherds, the former hippies, the modern-day rappers, the homeless and the sick, the shamans, and the followers of one of the six Russian Christs,’ just one of the many arcane religions that flourish in this isolated, impossible region.

About this title

About the Author

Born in 1957, Jacek Hugo-Bader is a Polish journalist for the leading daily paper, Gazeta Wyborcza. He is a former special-needs teacher, loader of trucks, weigher of pigs, and counselor of troubled couples. He lives in Warsaw.

From Booklist

Siberian travelogues typically involve the trans-Siberian railroad, but not Hugo-Bader’s. A Polish journalist, he drove from Moscow to Vladivostok in winter. Inviting cold-weather misadventure––his car caught fire, among other mishaps––Hugo-Bader embarked on the journey in 2007, accomplished it in several months, and racked up interpersonal encounters in Siberia’s contemporary life. For the most part, it seemed to be harsh, inebriated, and short. Staying with a group of indigenous herders, Hugo-Bader inventoried the deaths of most of its members through alcoholism, suicide, or accident, a grim tableau somewhat elucidated by his interviews with a shaman and a hypnotist who succored people on the slide. If such pathologies afflicted young non-Russian Siberians, the Russians themselves didn’t live much past their fifties, as Hugo-Bader observed in stories from hitchhikers and in a visit to the Soviet Union’s radioactive nuclear test site. He found a happy community of Russians, however, followers of Sergei Torop, who had revealed his divinity as Jesus Christ. With an open ear and a wry eye, Hugo-Bader delivers a dismaying but vivid chronicle of post-Communist Siberia. --Gilbert Taylor

About this edition

• Publisher: Counterpoint
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1619020114
• ISBN 13: 9781619020115
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336