Using the writers of the Golden Age as her guides-Pushkin, Tolstoy, Gogol, and Turgenev, among others-Sara Wheeler searches for a Russia not really in the news headlines, traveling from rinsed northwestern beet areas and the Far Eastern Arctic tundra towards the cauldron of nation­alities, religions, and languages in the Caucasus. Bypassing major cities whenever you can, she goes rather to the areas from the country’s literary masters. With her, we start to see the fabled Trigorskoye (“three hillsides”) estate about Dirt and Stars: Moves in Russia with Pushkin, Tolstoy, and Various other Geniuses of the Golden Age that Pushkin frequented during his exile, now maintained in his honor. We look for Dostoevsky along the waters of Lake Ilmen, site from the only home the restless writer ever owned. We spend tribute towards the solitary stone that continues to be of Tol­stoy’s birthplace. Wheeler weaves these authors’ lives and functions around their traditional homes, giving us wealthy portraits of the numerous diverse Russias that these authors spoke.

As she moves, Wheeler follows local guides, boards with families in humble homestays, eats roe and pelmeni and cabbage soup, invokes dishes from Learning the Art of Soviet Cooking, learns the vocabulary, and observes the design of outcry and silence that characterizes lifestyle under Vladimir Putin. Mud and Stars gives us timely, witty, and deeply personal insights into Russia, after that and now.