About the Author

Daniel Kalder was born in Fife, Scotland in 1974. He studied English Literature at Edinburgh University. In 1994 he was selected as one of the BBC's Young Poets of the Year. Kalder moved to Russia in 1997, where he found himself living in Smolensk, the only foreigner in the city, totally alone, unable to speak the language or read the alphabet. He loved it. He discovered an alternate universe of names, scientists, architecture, books, art, and music. And so Kalder's obsession with anti-tourism began. In 2001, he published his first short story in Chapman, Scotland's top literary magazine, but he subsequently abandoned short story writing and set about writing Lost Cosmonaut. He has produced articles on various themes ranging from CIA-approved torture techniques to how to swallow swords to the history of Lenin's corpse for a number of magazines in the UK and Moscow under a myriad of pseudonyms. And, so, for the last ten years Kalder has lived in the former Soviet Union applying himself to several different trades, though he has never sold arms or human organs.

Reviews

"A considerable achievement." -- The Guardian (London)

"Imagine a Bill Bryson with Tourette's, and you'll have some of the flavour of this spasmodic, deliberately crass, strangely wonderful book." -- Evening Standard (London)

"Kalder has written a brilliantly funny travel book that questions the essence of exploration and the nature of tourism in an age when there's nowhere new to go." -- Esquire (UK)

"Revelatory." -- The Times Literary Supplement (London)