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acityofbooks's review
5.0
Black Tea is as much a memoir as it is a travel-log. Englishman, Stephen Morris, returns to once again Russia and his Russian wife, and his Russian family, and his Russian children. In an effort to resurrect his connection with his family. He suggests they all go on a family trip together, and bizarrely he takes them to an ex-prison camp, in the White Sea, in the extreme north of Russia. Whereupon his wife and children leave. Stephen Morris then travels Russia, without them, in a kind of unsurprising, kind of normal, well-screw-you-I'll-travel-without-you-anyway.
Stephen Morris's extensive knowledge of the Russian people and culture, he's many Russian friends, his ability to read and speak the language means he does not have a tourist perspective on Russia. He is both apart and detached from it. This gives his memoir a depth of understanding that surpasses other books, for this reason, I am sure it was short-listed for the Royal Society of Literature reward.
Stephen Morris's extensive knowledge of the Russian people and culture, he's many Russian friends, his ability to read and speak the language means he does not have a tourist perspective on Russia. He is both apart and detached from it. This gives his memoir a depth of understanding that surpasses other books, for this reason, I am sure it was short-listed for the Royal Society of Literature reward.
rosemadr's review
5.0
More accurate than any guidebook this travelogue unfolds a relationship with Russia, as uneven and mysterious as any long term intimacy. Morris precisely captures the expectations of travel and the reality of a confrontation with place which lacks grand notions or narrative regularities. Rather, we are introduced to a patchwork of histories, geographic encounters, personal recollections and experiences. Black Tea provokes you to reassess your assumptions about this complex and controversial nation, not to replace them with new ones but to open a window to a view more accurate to the truths of life and history.
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