{"product_id":"mud-and-stars-tpb-w2","title":"Sara Wheeler: Mud and Stars: Travels in Russia with Pushkin and Other Geniuses of the Golden Age [2019] paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003eThere is a literal Russian landscape, and there is its emotional, literary counterpart. In \u003ci\u003eMud and Stars\u003c\/i\u003e, award-winning writer Sara Wheeler sets out to explore both. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWith the writers of the Golden Age as her guides - Pushkin, Tolstoy, Gogol and Turgenev, among others - Wheeler travels across eight time zones, from rinsed north-western beetroot fields and far-eastern Arctic tundra to the cauldron of ethnic soup that is the Caucasus. She follows nineteenth-century footsteps to make connections between then and now: between the places where flashing-epauletted Lermontov died in the aromatic air of Pyatigorsk, and sheaves of corn still stand like soldiers on a blazing afternoon, just like in Gogol's stories. On the Trans-Siberian railway in winter she crunches across snowy platforms to buy dried fish from \u003ci\u003ebabushki\u003c\/i\u003e, and in summer she sails the Black Sea where dolphins leapt in front of violet Abkhazian peaks. She also spends months in fourth-floor 1950s apartments, watching television with her hosts, her new friends bent over devices and moaning about Ukraine.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAt a time of deteriorating relations between Russia and the West, Wheeler searches for a Russia not in the news - a Russia of humanity and daily struggles. She gives voice to the 'ordinary' people of Russia, and discovers how the writers of the Golden Age continue to represent their country today.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Wheeler, Sara","offers":[{"title":"New","offer_id":44231875232034,"sku":"9780224098021","price":18.75,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0616\/4001\/6057\/files\/wheeler-sara-sara-wheeler-mud-and-stars-travels-in-russia-with-pushkin-and-other-geniuses-of-the-golden-age-2019-paperback-9780224098021-58500822368595.jpg?v=1727965025","url":"https:\/\/theirishbookshop.live\/products\/mud-and-stars-tpb-w2","provider":"Chapters Bookstore","version":"1.0","type":"link"}