RECENT REVIEWS:

The Umbrella Academy by Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running: A Memoir by Haruki Murakami »

After 9/11: America's War on Terror (2001- ) by Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colón »

Narcisa: Our Lady of Ashes by Jonathan Shaw »

Old Rare New: The Independent Record Shop by Emma Pettit »

You probably won't find any Lonely Planet entries for Tatarstan, Kalmykia, Mari-El, or Udmurtia. These four semi-autonomous Russian republics are what author Daniel Kalder calls "wastelands, black holes, and grim urban blackspots: all the places which, ordinarily, people choose to avoid." Some Russians can't locate them on a map. With his first book, Lost Cosmonaut, a send-up of the travel writing genre, self-described "anti-tourist" Kalder sets out to write about the emptiness of traveling to these nowhere-lands.

Kalder and his traveling companions irreverently wander around Tatarstan and Kalmykia, not knowing what they're looking for, not speaking with any locals ("I don't much like talking to people," he says), eating bad food and occasionally stumbling upon some bizarre anti-tourist trap, such as a museum housing Peter the Great's collection of preserved babies in jars. But along the way, Kalder starts to get serious about his project. When asked why he is traveling to such unknown locales, he off-handedly replies something about being a journalist, mostly to provide distance from an answer that he's not entirely sure of himself. Kalder's journeys to the unknown republics take place over the course of four years, when he's in his late twenties, not knowing what direction he's headed. His observations on his existential dread and self-consciousness are just as sharp-eyed as those on, say, pagan ritual in Mari-El (the only place in the world listing paganism as a state religion).

As Kalder learns to relate to himself, he proves he's not such a bad journalist after all; one of his best interviews features a humane, empathetic take on the men who run a mail-order-bride service. Showing us how a cheeky, clever slacker actually grows up to find some purpose to his wanderlust, Lost Cosmonaut makes both an insightful travel journal and a good memoir.