A novel set in Siberia shortly after the Russian Revolution. Highly recommended by Philip Pullman, and written by James Meek, who has won awards for his reporting on Iraq and Guantanamo Bay for the Guardian. Also, published by Canongate. That's good enough for me.

What would the inside of a suicide bomber's mind be like? James Meek addresses the murkier excesses of religious and political extremism in this bleak tale of a disparate group of individuals stranded in Siberia in the chaos just after the First World War. A religious sect of castrates, a female photographer with a young son and a secret, the remnants of a Czech legion who want nothing more than a ticket home, a local governor who has lost his mind and a Jewish lieutenant, intelligent, liberal and socially isolated. Their fragile equilibrium is disturbed by the appearance of a mysterious traveller who claims to be an escaped convict, and a trail of murders, some gruesome in the extreme, which rapidly ensue.

The period is interesting, chaotic and little known to English readers. The style oscillates, sometimes uneasily, between laconic, black humour and a not altogether convincing pastiche of the Great Russian Novel. At times the grotesque quirkiness seems to dominate the proceedings, to the point of obscuring whatever point the writer is trying to make. This is the first novel I remember reading where the motif of cannibalism became monotonous rather than shocking.

I think it's best to read the whole thing quickly at one sitting, thus completely immersing yourself in its world. Marr is an award-winning journalist whose recent reports from Iraq and Guantanamo Bay are renowned, but his urge to find parallels between this study of early twentieth-century extremism and similar, more recent examples, is somewhat obscured by his enthusiam for the oddities of Russian history.

No clear conclusions are drawn, other than the general observation that attempts to deny your humanity in the service of a cause, no matter how noble, are eclipsed by the ordinary, everyday miracles of human decency and tenderness, sometimes in intolerable circumstances. Hardly an original message, but a strange and haunting novel.

sent to a lady in Scotland yesteday.