Before Russians crossed the Urals Mountains in the sixteenth century to settle their colony in north Asia, they heard rumours of boutiful fur, of bizzarre people without eyes who ate by shrugging their shoulders, and of a land where trees exploded from cold. This region of frozen tundra, endless forest and humming steppe between the Urals and the Pacific Ocean was a vast, strange and frightening paradise. It was Siberia. Tracing the historical contours of Siberia, AJ Haywod offers a detailed acocount of the architectural and cultural landmarks of cities such as Irktusk, Tobolsk, Barnaul and Novosibirsk.
