Tom Parfitt – High Caucasus: A Mountain Quest in Russia’s Haunted Hinterland

Tuesday, 3 December, 5pm

Earlham Hall 0.12

A stunning memoir of the 1,000-mile walk journalist Tom Parfitt made across Russia’s Caucasus mountains to lay to rest a ghost – confronting trauma through connection with history, people and place.

On 1st September 2004, Chechen and Ingush militants took more than a thousand people captive at a school in the Caucasus region of southern Russia. Working as a correspondent, Tom Parfitt witnessed the bloody climax in which 334 hostages died, more than half of them children. The experience left Tom emotionally shredded, struggling to find a way to return to his life in Moscow and put to rest the ghosts of the Beslan siege. Having long been fascinated by the mountainous North Caucasus, Tom turned to his love of walking as a source of both recuperation and discovery. In High Caucasus, he shares his remarkable thousand-mile quest in search of personal peace – and a greater understanding of the roots of violence in a region whose fate has tragic parallels with the Ukraine of today. Starting his journey in Sochi on the Black Sea and walking the mountain ranges to Derbent, the ancient fortress city on the Caspian, Tom traverses the political, religious and ethnic fault-lines of seven Russian republics, including Chechnya and Dagestan. Through bear-haunted forests, across high altitude pastures and over the shoulders of Elbrus, Europe’s highest mountain, he finds companionship and respite in the homes of proud, little-known peoples. Walking exerts a restorative power; it also provides a unique, ground-level view of a troubled yet exquisite corner of the world.

Tom Parfitt is correspondent for The Times covering Russia. He moved to Moscow as a young man, having learnt fluent Russian at university, and quickly became a correspondent for the Guardian, the Telegraph and The Times. He is also a fellow of the Royal Geographic Society.

All Welcome

East European Refreshments provided