Grand Centaur Station: Unruly Living With the New Nomads of Central Asia
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.
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Grand Centaur Station: Unruly Living With the New Nomads of Central Asia
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.
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Grand Centaur Station: Unruly Living With the New Nomads of Central Asia

Grand Centaur Station: Unruly Living With the New Nomads of Central Asia

by Larry Frolick
Grand Centaur Station: Unruly Living With the New Nomads of Central Asia

Grand Centaur Station: Unruly Living With the New Nomads of Central Asia

by Larry Frolick

eBook

$14.99 

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Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781551995175
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Publication date: 10/12/2011
Sold by: Random House
Format: eBook
Pages: 360
File size: 5 MB

About the Author

Larry Frolick is the author of Splitting Up: Divorce, Culture, and the Search for a Real Life, Ten Thousand Scorpions, and Grand Centaur Station.

Table of Contents

Author’s Note
Introduction: The Muzhik

PART ONE
Red
Circle Against the Square:
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors
Crime and Disorder (Repeat)
She Called Me a Romantic, the Bitch!
The Interpenetration of Light with Sorrow
Elektro-Shock Lady in La-La Land
To the Dacha with Two Monsters
Is This Yours?
Everyone’s Dandy in Goon City
The Two-Centimetre Question
Spiritual Danger
The Styx Is a River That Runs from the Heart
Flatheads at Twelve O’Clock High
Crocodile Shaslyk, Anyone?
The Square Is the Icon of Our Age

PART TWO
Black
Beyond the Urals:
The Choice Between Italian Shoes and the Exotic
Pahlavan Makhmud: Poet, Champion Wrestler, and Occasional Hat-Maker
Three Girls Named Star
At the Sign of the Blue Tongue
Who Was Natalie Wood?
Notes from the Underground
To the Summer Pastures
Lonely Penitent’s Guide to the World’s Worst Trips
Welcome to Kashgar City, Big Noses
The House of Stones and Earth
The Yellow King’s Kids
Nocturnal Brightness:
The Gods of Cloud, Rain, Wind, and Thunder

PART THREE
White
Life as a Horse:
Midnight Border Crossing
The Bare Texts of Its Boundaries
Karakorum
So What Is Your National Pride?
Twenty-One Taras, or, I Married a Mongolian Train-Trader
Baikal
About the Dress They Sold the Cow For

Epilogue: The Joke
Acknowledgements
Some Classic Works for Further Reading
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