The Endless Steppe: Siberia Seen Through the Eyes of a Little Girl

By accident I stumbled upon this paperback and was mesmerized from the first to the last page. The Endless Steppe: Growing Up in Siberia by Esther Hautzig is the story of a polish girl who was deported to Siberia along with her family during world war II by the Soviets.

Used to the comfort and security of life of the polish upper class she finds herself thrown into the harshest of conditions. There is no comfort whatsoever for the deported, they are forced to work in a mine and even later, when conditions improve a little, the discrepancy to the life Esther lost in Poland must have been overwhelming.

Despite of all this, the spirit of the book is very matter of fact, the story doesn´t get lost in self pity or complain. Esther Hautzig is eleven when they have to settle in a far off corner of the Siberian steppe and she recalls the arduousness's of getting used to the total lack of comfort and security, she talks about families being ripped apart and people dying like flies. But in midst of all this hardship she is able to find beauty and friendship.

The Endless Steppe is not so much travel literature. It is a book about courage and optimism in the harshest of circumstances, about values and composure. And along the way you get to know a not so widely known aspect of the history of world war II – and the vastness and beauty of the Siberian steppe.

My three favourite books about South America

1. My number one favourite book about South America isn´t actually about South America, it covers basically the entire world. It is This Thing of Darkness by Harry Thompson and relates the voyage of the Beagle and its Captain Robert Fitzroy. The book has an overwhelming 728 pages but the moment you submerge yourself in the story you can´t put it away. Although you might know the story it is worth reading this book, because the author has a way of creating a dense atmosphere by describing until the smallest detail, that makes you a part of the story. You can feel the Atlantic gust, smell the odour of a Brazilian port and understand the moral issues Charles Darwin and Robert FitzRoy were fighting with. A great lesson of history and a highly entertaining novel!

2. One of my favourite South American writers is Chilean born Isabel Allende and while I really enjoyed reading her novels, her autobiographical work gives a deep insight in circumstances of life in Chile before and during the military coup. Those are the three volumes of Allendes work I enjoyed most: first of all Paula, of course, the book Allende wrote while keeping her dying daughter company. While she is mourning her predictable loss she lets her childhood pass by - you realize where she got the inspiration for the house of the spirit.

My Invented Country is not really a sequel to Paula but equally moving. The book I liked best though, was Life and Spirits, a book with alternating passages of texts and an interview conducted by one of Allendes friends, Celia Correas Zapata. Besides providing some more background about this wonderful writer, it also may be the most intimate book. Allende talks about what drives her to write, about her feelings concerning her daughter, her family and her second marriage with William Gordon. and you get a glimpse of her day to day life...

Although I already put a total of four books, I will put another one :-). So here we go:

3. My third choice is an easy one: one of my favourite places in the world is southern Patagonia with its vast empty landscapes and Francisco Coloane describes it to perfection. In Tierra del Fuego, the windbeaten terrain and the taciturn people who fight for a living under the most difficult circumstances come to life for the reader.


I hope you enjoy reading these books as much as I did!