Making great the bad places - Rated 
Did you know there was a Buddhist republic in Europe? And a desert for that matter? Or a pagan republic? Russia stretches from Eastern Europe to Alaska and contains many semi-autonomous republics - they have their own presidents, their own TV stations, their own heroes and legends and, of course, their own corruption, brutality, and cities dedicated to chess. They just don't have tourists.
Kalder sets out as an 'anti-tourist' visiting these undesirable places and casting a realistic eye over them and their prospects; yet the same eye also contains a deep empathy towards these people and their invisible countries. Kalder's black humour carries the book from history to personal encounter (or non-encounter) with ease, and his revelations broaden out the view well beyond four republics you've never heard of.
Kalder states at the beginning that 'travel rarely broadens the mind', and travel books even more rarely do so. But this one does, brilliantly.
Two stars for effort - Rated 
Two stars for effort, because I realise that writing a book must be a difficult, demanding process for the writer, no matter what the end product looks like. Three stars deducted because the end product is incredibly disappointing.
The reviews here were so divided that I decided to go with my gut instinct, which was to read it - what a mistake that proved to be. Looking at the reviews again, I almost get the feeling that the positive reviews here were written by Kalder's friends - or maybe even himself.
As others have mentioned, the book does indeed have its moments, but overall I would have to call this the Emperor's New Clothes of travel writing, with the writer trying to con the reader with pointless amblings of dubious veracity that ultimately deliver nothing. He even tries to pull the same con job with his photographs, which he presents under some concocted off-beat/nihilistic notion of being "anti-photos", but in the end are simply bad pictures that display no talent, no insight, no perspective, no humour. In a country such as Russia, with such a richness of photographic potential (and I don't mean pretty churches), this is just pathetic.
On top of this, the writer simply comes across as a highly unpleasant person - and perhaps he deserves some praise for making no effort whatsover to conceal this. He is a self-confessed cheapskate, poorly informed, obnoxious, incredibly immature, insensitive and very abrasive, and clearly considers himself vastly superior to all around him. I could think of no worse travelling companion. If you nevertheless wish to ignore the negative reviews here - as I did - be aware that this is the kind of person you will be travelling with for 250 pages. Really horrible.
intentionally misunderstood - Rated 
This book is no great work of literature, as other reviewers have already pointed out. Kalder has one great piece of insight, however, which I must presume he intended. (Like many of his native countryman, he has a talent for deceptive understatement.) His real achievement is to draw the reader in to passing judgement on the often banal lives of others, connected to the west of the continent by geographical chance. He dares the reader to condescend and then turns this condescension completely around. His achievement is to deceive the reader into believing they are cleverer than they actuallý are. He does this by using the disguised wit of the traveller, playing stupid when required so as not to appear too threatening and keeping an eye on the door so that a quick exit can be made, no trace left - much as he does at the end. His final message - our circumstances are largely a matter of luck - cuts across the prevailing message of western culture, embodied in the idiot tourist charicature, that we generally speaking make our own.
A Willing Sinner - Rated
The Lost Cosmonaut floats in the void, staring at the earth, trying to understand it, and also trying to understand his relationship to the earth - will he drift further away into space, alone, or will gravity pull him back down to the planet, possibly obliterating him in the process?
The title is based on a dream Kalder had while on his travels. In the book, he seeks out republics within European Russia that no one has heard of, including many Russians. He begins as a drifter, going to Tatarstan by chance, but as the book progresses his visits take a form - although why he goes can be as random as a pin in the map ('the name sounds ugly'). Throughout the book the humour is uncompromising: usually brutal, outrageous and black as space, the jokes reflect the unpleasantness of life in these places, while it is simultaneously very Scottish.
The book is very modern (or 'post-modern'). Kalder openly dislikes travel narratives when the rich westerner visits the poor man and his traveller anxiety is strong throughout. As he develops from a drifter into a writer (eventually being asked in Udmurtia to be a television expert but refusing), like the Lost Cosmonaut he writes in fragments for different audiences, some of whom exist and some of whom definitely do not.
The style puts some people off but for others who dislike conventional travel it is as exciting as the content. But regardless of the style, the content is absolutely new and important; go to any online encyclopaedia and the 'further reading' for any of these countries is limited to Lost Cosmonaut.
While posing as a lost drifter and refusing the title of expert, Kalder has produced an incredibly original book of insight and humour that, maybe to his chagrin, has made him one.
Missed opportunity - Rated
Boris's review is bang on the nail. The first two sections of the book, on Tatarstan and Kalmykia, are fairly successful, though I was disappointed that the author didn't take the opportunities presented to him in Kalmykia, like visiting the school with Svetlana or seeing more of the theatre and meeting the performers. Despite these minor quibbles though, the first half of the book is well-written, interesting and an enjoyable read. We learn quite a lot about Tatarstan and Kalmykia. The jokes and flights of fancy (such as the police "incident" in Kalmykia) are innovative and generally work well. However, what was fresh, funny and insightful in the first half of the book begins to grate in the second, which is almost entirely unsuccessful. Now without his travelling companions, Kalder visits the republics of Mari El and Udmurtia, apparently having done very little research in advance, and not sure why he's there or what to investigate. We learn very little about these places or their inhabitants - in both republics, Kalder is repeatedly advised to travel to the villages if he wants to meet real Mari and Udmurt and see their cultures - an opportunity he deliberately ignores, preferring to focus the essentially Russian capitals of the two republics instead. The Mari culture is represented by a single loon, a self-appointed pagan High Priest, while the Udmurt culture is barely investigated at all. Although the Udmurt language is briefly discussed, Mari is not.
The occasional use of juvenile humour works well at first, lightening proceedings by virtue of being different and refreshing, but by the second half of the book begins to grate in its snide predictability. Likewise, while the invented elements and joke scenarios such as the Kalmyk police incident initially work moderately well, as the book progresses it becomes increasingly hard in places to tell what actually happened from what the author has made up for purposes of humour.
Overall, Kalder's approach is far too passive. He'd prefer to sit on the fence and make snide comments rather than get involved and genuinely engage with the people in his book. This is to his own loss and is to the detriment of any real interest and humour to be gained from the book. Although not uninsightful in his analysis of the people he meets, he is far too isolated in his approach - he never breaks out of his reserve when engaging with the people and cultures he encounters, and thus learns very little about them or from them. Although the aim of the book is a "journey to nowhere", an exploration of nothingness and forgotten places unknown to the average Westerner, the book becomes more and more frustrating in its unwillingness to even scratch the surface of the places it visits. The style is extremely bitty, as if the book was put together from a collection of short thoughts, scraps and essays, and the author's shiftiness and unwillingness to be sincere or straightforward with anyone he encounters, particularly when interviewed by Udmurt television at the end of the book, is disappointing and distasteful.
The one thing which this book calls out for is conversations with the ordinary people who live in these places. If he wants to experience the true reality of life in this part of the world, Kalder should visit the inhabitants of the concrete Soviet-era tower blocks he spends the book walking past whilst trying to experience "nothingness" and see how the people there actually live - talk to them about their past, their day-to-day lives, their experiences, their culture and how their lives have changed.
Finally: what is up with the fictional "extract" at the end of the book? It's mostly well-written, but content-wise it's a mixture of juvenility and pretention, and the overall tone seems to be one of "aren't I clever?"
Overall, 2 stars. An original and interesting idea, not well executed, but with a fair few insightful moments and good analyses of society, the human condition and contemporary Russia buried amongst pages of dead-ends and misfiring adolescent humour.
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