Lost and Found in Russia: Encounters in a Deep Heartland

Far from Moscow and St Petersburg, there lies another Russia. Overlooked by the new urban elites and almost unknown to the West, in the great provincial hinterlands of the Volga River and Siberia, Russians struggle to reconcile their old traditions with the new ways of living. Returning again and again to the deep heartland of this rapidly evolving country from 1992 to the present, Susan Richards struck up some extraordinary friendships. With Anna, a questing journalist struggling to express her passionate spirituality within the rules of the new society. And Natasha, a restless spirit, transplanted from Siberia in a bid to escape the demands of her upper class family and her own demons. And Tatiana and Misha, whose business empire has blossomed from the ashes of the Soviet Union but who, despite all their luxury, seem uneasy in this new world. Through their stories and her own experiences Susan Richards demonstrates how in Russia the past and the present cannot be separated. 'Lost and Found in Russia' is a magical and unforgettable portrait of a society in transition. '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; 'fascinating...You should buy the book to find out how [the] story ended, as well as what happened when Richards hopped on a cruise down the Volga organised by a mafia boss she had never met.. there is a human optimism that shines out of these hard lives and this loving account of them — an optimism that defies the rational. But then if there is one thing you learn from this book, it is that we must all live beyond the rational.' — Angus MacQueen, Guardian; 'moving, sometimes perplexing, even distressing...Susan Richards combines fluency in Russian with great tact, curiosity and a capacity for friendship which overcomes the barriers that defeat most foreign attempts to chronicle post-Soviet Russia...her book, being a bottom-to-top account, is perhaps equally important (as Anna Politkovskaya's Putin's Russia)...as admirable as it is honest'. — Donald Rayfield, Literary Review