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Hier is aflevering zes (in de podcast zelf abusievelijk aflevering vijf genoemd…) over het boek Man And Mystery In Asia van de onvolprezen Ferdinand Ossendowski. Ik hoor graag wat je ervan vond.
En hier is het bestand (mp3 320 kbps):
I was lucky this weekend to get a chance to read a book which has been lying on my desk for a few months now (next to
Man And Mystery In Asia
the ever-growing pile of the latest research in my field…): Man And Mystery in Asia by Ferdinand Ossendowski, the Polish noble/ chemist/ biologist/ geologist/ explorer/ fugitive from the Cheka and the Bolsheviks/ bestseller author/ hunter/ storyteller extraordinaire. I’m sure I’m leaving a number of defining qualifications out of this description, but the fact that he saw the inside of a prison both under the Tsar and under the Bolsheviks on account of ideological crimes tells you something about the man. That he was a fundamentally decent and courageous person. Or incredibly stupid and unfortunate to fall foul of two such formidable enemies,
Beasts, Men And Gods. I’d like to write a book with a title like that. A take-it-or-leave-it title. An I-don’t-give-a-flying-fuck-what-you-think title. Written by a Polish chemist on the run for the Bolsheviks during the Red-White civil war in Siberia and Mongolia. Ferdinand Ossendowski was a Polish noble in trouble with the secret police of the Russian Czar. Then he got into even worse troubles with the not-so-secret police of the Bolsheviks. He fled to Siberia, then Mongolia and finally Manchuria, in the course of which he matter-of-factly spent a Siberian winter by himself in a forest in a self-made shelter. Consorted with a confessed murderer and torturer.
