Booklist Review
Robbins' engaging travelogue is an educational antidote to misperceptions about the country spread by the movie Borat (2006). Robbins, the author of The Empress of Ireland (2005), among other works, intermingles tales of his own adventures in Kazakhstan with stories of the country's Soviet history and various rulers. Over the course of his travels, Robbins speaks with a local philosopher, fends off a prostitute, and, of course, visits the country's apple orchards. He learns that tales of King Arthur may well come from Kazakh legends, and he journeys through the country with Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev. From describing his visits to Kazakhstan's wealth of oil fields to hearing a perfect John Lennon impersonation during his explorations, Robbins brings to light a complex and fascinating Kazakhstan unknown to most Westerners.--Boyle, Katherine Copyright 2008 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Most people associate Kazakhstan with the character Sacha Baron Cohen popularized in the 2006 film Borat, but Robbins's (The Empress of Ireland) delightful and masterful travelog reveals that it is in fact a country rich in history, natural beauty, and, perhaps most important, tolerance. On a flight to Moscow, Robbins chances upon a man from Arkansas en route to Kazakhstan to meet his future bride. Intrigued by the man's assertion that apples originated in Kazakhstan, Robbins sets off to see if this is indeed the case. Once there, not only does he discover that it is, but he also learns that Kazakhstan is a country of wild tulips, oil, minerals, 46 principal religions, and a seemingly equal number of ethnic groups. But the picture is not all rosy. Robbins writes about the gulags, the ecological disaster of the Aral Sea, and the scorched earth of nuclear test sites under Soviet rule. Despite these discoveries, however, he manages to make this an overall hopeful book by combining grave topics with less grave ones and adding a good dose of wit. This book will do for Kazakhstan what John Gimlette's At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig did for Paraguay. Highly recommended for all libraries.-Lee Arnold, Historical Soc. of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
