The Other Side of Russia: A Slice of Life in Siberia and the Russian Far East (Eastern European Studies (College Station, Tex.), No. 21.)

by Sharon Hudgins

Release Date: April, 2003

Edition: Hardcover

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A normal life in eastern Russia?

As a director of an history museum I am often asked to review books and such was the case of Hudgins recent book. Most Americans live so close to our many comforts that we really don't know how the rest of the world actually lives "a normal life." This books will truly open you to this experience. You will love her story of living in the "high rise village" and her story on wash day will make you really appreciate your laundry service broken buttons and all! I also loved her "food writer" description of the the sheep's head dinner. I hope we get more from this wonderful writer about living in Russia. Ted Peters, Director, Heritage Farmstead Museum.

The Far Side of Russia

The Other Side of Russia is part travel narrative, part social history, part memoir, part food writing. All these parts come together to make a delightful book.

Sharon Hudgins and her husband Tom spent a year and a half in post-Soviet Siberia teaching business management for the University of Maryland's overseas program. As peripatetic ex-patriates, they were familiar with unfamiliarity. But they were still not prepared for what Siberia had to offer them.

Join Sharon and Tom as they picnic with the Russian Mafiya, try to teach in an educational system that discourages questions and independent thinking, and ponder why a herd of horses is tangled in downtown rush hour traffic.

In "Absurdistan" it is just one perplexing thing after another. The electricity and water in their poorly-constructed apartment building work only intermittently. But in spite of such challenges, they make friends and entertain regularly. Cultural differences mean that the same friends who swoon over delicacies such as wafer-thin horse liver slices rolled with layers of horse fat, are unable to enjoy a Hudgins Tex-Mex feast.

Hudgins's previous work as a food and travel writer are evident here, and I wouldn't be surprised to learn that she writes fiction as well. The narrative is effortless and the stories she tells are by turns engaging and frightening.