Mud and Stars: Travels in Russia with Pushkin, Tolstoy, and Other Geniuses of the Golden Age

Wheeler (Chile: Travels in a Thin Country) mixes travelogue and literary history in an entertaining work centered on her fascination with the great Russian writers of the 19th century. Zigzagging across a vast landscape, Wheeler visits sites associated with Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Pushkin, and Turgenev, as well as lesser lights, such as Tolstoy’s writer friend Afanasy Fet. Amid accounts of these men’s lives, Wheeler relates her own experiences in homestays, sleeper cars, and hotels, showing how the run-down, seedy, and kitschy live in tension against the beauties of landscape and architecture. To Wheeler, if a single characteristic unites Russia, it is misery, “before, during and after communism.” At times, her tone toward the country and its people borders on mocking, as when noting the provincialism of her Russian language tutor, who “had once been to a conference in Greece, and spoke of the country like the Promised Land.” Vivid details nevertheless propel the narrative, from Gogol’s anorexia to “a tin-can shaded” lightbulb in far eastern Anadyr, where wages hover at just above $200 a month. Fans of Russian literature will find this survey simultaneously provoking and informative. Agent: Lisa Baker, Aitken Alexander Associates (U.K.). (Nov.)