Grand Centaur Station: Unruly Living with the New Nomads of Central Asia (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780771047824)

With the grim determination of an unrepentant rocker, Larry Frolick sets off on a 12,000-mile trek across Central Asia, brooding over the fate of its lost civilizations. From Kiev, Crimean Tartary, and Moscow, through the nomadic homelands of Uzbekistan, Kyrgizstan, Tien-Shan, and finally into distant Mongolia and Siberia, he explores a continent on the brink of a meltdown, a strange world lit harshly by the red afterglow of the Soviet collapse.

His vivid account opens the door to a crowd of unlikely strangers: Mafiosi flatheads, salt-mine campers, fractious archaeologists, a conceptual artist who uses fresh corpses in his window displays, the very last of three Romanov princesses, an inept Chinese secret agent, a relentless Uzbek glottal probologist, disgruntled e-mail swains - and above all, Larissa, the moody Eurasian beauty who "just stepped out of a novel in her impossibly pointy Italian shoes." With gleeful wit and a steely eye for detail, Frolick transports the reader to a world inhabited by a people burning with desire for something new to happen.

Author: Larry Frolick
ISBN-10: 0771047827
ISBN-13: 9780771047824
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Language: English
Published: 03/23/2004
Pages: 360
Format: Paperback
Weight: 1.25lbs
Size: 8.90h x 6.00w x 1.10d

Review Citation(s):
Quill & Quire 03/01/2004 pg. 46