Compelling account of a journey through the far south of the old Russian empire, known to its peoples as "the edge of the world". Marsden visits villages unseen by Westerners since before the revolution, meeting many larger-than-life characters on the way; an exiled Georgian prince, wandering doctors, strutting Cossacks, survivors of the gulags, and isolated sects of "Spirit-Wrestlers". "Magnificent... a Polish )Wild Swans( meets )Dr Zhivago(" William Dalrymple, )Sunday Times(.