If Bill Bryson is the cosy, favourite son of travel writing, Daniel Kalder is his existentialist, gritty half-brother who wants to stick a pin in our comfortable travel pillows. A self-styled anti-tourist, he shuns the wonders of the world in favour of bleak wastelands and urban blackspots. Kalder’s book describes a series of adventures he made to the former Soviet Union, visiting obscure places such as the home town of the inventor of the Kalashnikov rifle. You’ll learn things like how Peter the Great’s collection of embalmed mutant babies got to Tatarstan.
Lost Cosmonaut
Faber & Faber
