SUMMARY:
'A work of great thoughtfulness and enterprise, it sheds a uniquely intimate light behind the facade of the new Russia.' - Colin Thubron;'A uniquely personal chronicle, and a testament to friendship. Susan Richards's political fact-finding is set ablaze by her intimacy with the discomforts and dangers of life in these remote regions, where the magic of the natural world challenges urban degradation, and where physical deprivation coexists with a richness of belief-systems as strange as the mountains of the moon.' - Victoria Glendinning;'Susan Richards has long been one of the very best writers on Russia. Her new book is a remarkable blend of travel and reflection, as she introduces us to the vivid gallery of people she meets in the provinces. The result is a brilliant, poignant evocation of a society in transition.' - Robert Service;'Once again, Susan Richards gives a rare and wonderful evocation of ordinary lives in Russia. People fall in love, fall ill, make money, lose money; some are nobly defeated, some shamelessly successful. Each one tells us more about the lethal tides of recent Russian history than years of newspaper reports.' - Philip Marsden;'Russia exerts a peculiar pull for English travellers...Susan Richards's version shines because she knows her subjects very well. These are stories of friendships across the miles, not just brief encounters plundered for material...This traveller's tale, with all the absorption and detail of the genre, is also the story of an entire country.' - Anne McElvoy, Evening Standard;'Lost and Found in Russia is intense reading...bursting with good material...For a rich portrait of the new Russia, grab this off the shelf and skip all those biographies of Vladimir Putin.' - Thomas de Waal, Sunday Times;'wonderful...Lost and Found in Russia is beautifully written, with arresting images on almost every page... It is a travelogue as rich and compelling as a novel' - Lesley Chamberlain, Independent