Viv Groskop

A far cry from Chekhov

Sara Wheeler travels thousands of miles to understand the country of Tolstoy and Pushkin, only to meet surliness, racism, homophobia and distrust

issue 03 August 2019

It would be hard to have better travel-writer credentials than Sara Wheeler. Here the author of The Magnetic North and Terra Incognita, a specialist in Arctic and Antarctic adventure, turns her attentions to the land mass that sprawls across eight time zones, where any traveller is guaranteed to receive an ostentatiously frosty reception — initially, at least.

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