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Books > Sport & Leisure > Travel & holiday > Travel writing
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The White Birch - A Russian Reflection (Hardcover)
Loot Price: R451
Discovery Miles 4 510
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(9%)
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The White Birch - A Russian Reflection (Hardcover)
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List price R495
Loot Price R451
Discovery Miles 4 510
You Save R44 (9%)
Expected to ship within 9 - 17 working days
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'It has been hand-planted by Tsarinas and felled by foresters. It
has been celebrated by peasants, worshipped by pagans and painted
by artists. It has self-seeded across mountains and rivers and
train tracks and steppe and right through the ruined modernity of a
nuclear fall-out site. And like all symbols, the story of the birch
has its share of horrors (white, straight, native, pure: how could
it not?). But, maybe in the end, what I'm really in search of is a
birch that means nothing: stripped of symbolism, bereft of
use-value . . . A birch that is simply a tree in a land that
couldn't give a shit.' The birch, genus Betula, is one of the
northern hemisphere's most widespread and easily recognisable
trees. A pioneer species, the birch is also Russia's unofficial
national emblem, and in The White Birch art critic Tom Jeffreys
sets out to grapple with the riddle of Russianness through numerous
journeys, encounters, histories and artworks that all share one
thing in common: the humble birch tree. We visit Catherine the
Great's garden follies and Tolstoy's favourite chair; walk through
the Chernobyl exclusion zone and among overgrown concrete bunkers
in Vladivostok; explore the world of online Russian brides and
spend a drunken night in Moscow with art-activists Pussy Riot, all
the time questioning the role played by Russia's vastly diverse
landscapes in forming and imposing national identity. And
vice-versa: how has Russia's dramatically shifting self-image
informed the way its people think about nature, land and belonging?
Curious, resonant and idiosyncratic, The White Birch is a unique
collection of journeys into Russia and among Russian people.
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