White Fever by Jacek Hugo-Bader - February 2013

Clare County Library's Online Bookclub for booklovers everywhere

Moderators: Clare Bookclub Mod, Clare Books Mod

Post Reply
Clare Bookclub Mod
Posts: 95
Joined: Tue Mar 27, 2007 12:28 pm

White Fever by Jacek Hugo-Bader - February 2013

Post by Clare Bookclub Mod » Tue Feb 05, 2013 8:00 pm

How time is flying past. It's February's book time already and this time I thought we should go on an odyssey, 'an odyssey into the frozen heart of a dying continent, sparkling with vignettes if human endurance.' (The Times).

I've always loved travel literature and love heading off on adventures with the authors and Jacek Hugo-Bader is great company both funny and enlightening.

Of course, no one in their right mind travels across Siberia without an axe. 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 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’s also dark humour 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.

Post Reply