Kolyma Diaries: A Journey into Russia's Haunted Hinterland

A Russian road trip like no other. This is Polish journalist Jacek Hugo-Bader's account of hitchhiking along the Kolyma highway that connects the prison camps of the Gulag. Hugo-Bader meets, and drinks with, the inhabitants of this bleak permafrost country: descendants of prisoners and of Soviet officials, hunters and journaists, mini oligarch and gold prospectors. Two thousand kilometres and many litres of vodka later, he realizes that he has paid for none of it . . . and  has come away with a hefty bribe from an oligarch too.