Between Two Worlds

Travel literature has the capacity to mold opinion and change minds. At the very least, we discover ourselves through our encounters with others.

In Russia, this has been particularly true. During the tsarist era, Russians’ perceptions of themselves were powerfully shaped by travelogues about the world that lay beyond the empire’s borders. And this continued through the Soviet period to the present day.

As a literary genre, travel writing is rarely just gratification for wanderlust. It can serve multiple political or personal agendas, and it can be witty, documentary and even subversive (and sometimes all three in one). In fact, one need not even travel to foreign lands to produce travelogues that inform or irritate.