A photo of Sophy Roberts, author of The Lost Pianos of Siberia, with a rail station in the background.

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Meet the author: Sophy Roberts

The Lost Pianos of Siberia

A SUNDAY TIMES BEST PAPERBACK OF 2021 
 
* Shortlisted for the 2021 Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year prize 
* A critically-acclaimed Sunday Times, Spectator and Independent Book of 2020 
* Now with colour photography by Michael Turek 
 
'Richly absorbing... An impressive exploration of Siberia's terrifying past.' Guardian 
'Evocative and wonderfully original.' Colin Thubron 
__________ 
 
Siberia's expansive history is traditionally one of exiles, bitter cold and suffering. Yet there is another tale to tell. 
 
Dotted throughout this remote and beautiful landscape are pianos created during the boom years of the nineteenth century. They tell the story of how, ever since entering Russian culture under the influence of Catherine the Great, piano music has run through the country like blood. How these pianos made the journey into this snow-bound wilderness in the first place is remarkable. That they might be capable of making music in such a hostile landscape feels like a miracle. 
 
The Lost Pianos of Siberia is an absorbing story about a piano hunt - a quixotic quest through two centuries of Russian history and eight time zones stretching across an eleventh of the world's land surface. It reveals not only an unexpected musical legacy, but profound and brave humanity in the last place on earth you might expect to find it. 
__________ 
 
What readers are saying about The Lost Pianos of Siberia: 
 
***** 'You know a book's good when, on finishing it, you just want to start again.' 
***** 'Beautifully written, full of compelling anecdotes celebrating Siberia's extraordinary history.' 
***** 'The most unusual and intelligent way to tell a travel story.'

An extraordinary encounter with a wildly fascinating and astonishingly ill-known region... This is a wonderful book.

The ultimate quest for the oddest objects - pianos - in the most unlikely place - Siberia. But Roberts makes it much more than that, an elegant and nuanced journey through literature, through history, through music, murder and incarceration and revolution, through snow and ice and remoteness, to discover the human face of Siberia. I loved this book.

An impressive exploration of Siberia's terrifying past.

An exuberant, eccentric journey through Russian vastness, European history and Russian culture, The Lost Pianos of Siberia is a quixotic quest, a picaresque travel adventure and a strange forgotten story, all wrapped into one fascinating book.

What shines through in this book is Roberts' genuine, humane affection for and fascination with the people she meets in Siberia.

A stunning example of modern historical travel writing

A richly observed cultural history... thrilling.

Fascinating account of Siberia’s horrific legacy told with great verve… Roberts is a wonderfully lyrical writer.

Beautifully written... A unique short history of Russia from Catherine the Great to Putin... A sense of the extraordinary marks every page.

Captures Siberia's wildness, but favours its enchantments.

Courage, patience, erudition and a sympathetic imagination… A travel book of rare quality.

Roberts achievement is to vividly bring us into a hidden landscape that in an over-travelled world retains its mystique.  Through her painterly depiction of the people she encounters, she infuses the epic with the intimate and reveals how sometimes looking is more important than finding

Utterly absorbing - a wonderful addition to the story of resilience, tragedy and triumph that are the hallmarks of Siberia. Roberts displays an empathy and understanding worthy of this deeply haunted, strangely fascinating land.

The Lost Pianos of Siberia is one of those magical books that captures the imagination and draws you into the beauty and majesty of Siberia. Idiosyncratic in style – part travelogue, part history, part detective trail – it is full of wonderful stories about human endurance through adversity and the transformative power of music in the most remote and forgotten outposts of this vast territory. A book to savour and remember.

Helen Rappaport, author of THE LAST DAYS OF THE ROMANOVS

Utterly fascinating and revealing to anyone who only knows Siberia through its Great Myth as a forgotten, frozen Nowhere.

A thrilling adventure to the ends of the earth, where sunlight glitters in the snowdrifts and the strains of the exile's song floats through the air. Pack your suitcases for Siberia - Sophy Roberts' gorgeous prose will summon you there like a smell.

What worlds this book traverses! From gilded recital halls to the haunts of Siberian tigers; from remote penal colonies to volcanic islands in the Bering Sea: I felt as if I had travelled through places I had only dreamed of, following these magical instruments through landscapes and histories so full of tragedy and hope.

Absolutely intoxicating. Such vivid detail, rich atmosphere, heartbreak, and elegance. Sophy Roberts melds research and personal experience to trace the paths of political prisoners, convicts, and conscripts determined to find beauty in exile, and track down the regal pianos now scattered in villages, museums, and storehouses across the largest country on earth. Some cherished and some neglected, these pianos tell of the musical colonization of a continent, and their stories sing.

Jonathan C. Slaght, author of OWLS OF THE EASTERN ICE

Romance and tragedy, gulags and tower blocks, princes and oligarchs and of course tigers and pianos, Roberts captures all the wonder and heartbreak of an entire Empire in one feast of a book.

Ben Rawlence, author of CITY OF THORNS and RADIO CONGO

Beautifully constructed, clear-eyed and generous-spirited.

Will Atkins, author of THE MOOR and THE IMMEASURABLE WORLD

A noble quest to understand the dazzling respect for music embedded in Russian culture.

An intoxicating journey into the wilds of Siberia.

An account of dogged journeys through Siberia from the Urals to the Sea of Okhotsk... Roberts's pages sing like a symphony.

Sophy Roberts is an award-winning British journalist, and a regular contributor to FT Weekend. Her critically acclaimed first book, The Lost Pianos of Siberia, was a Sunday Times Book of the Year in 2020, and went on to be published in eight more languages. Her second book, A Training School for Elephants, is another unusual quest, threading lost history with modern reportage in India, Iraq, DRC, Tanzania and Belgium. Following an 1879 journey that four elephants from Pune made to Africa’s Great Lakes, it is a reckoning with colonial ambitions gone berserk.

Siberia's history is traditionally one of exiles, bitter cold and suffering. Yet there is another tale to tell. Dotted throughout this remote landscape are pianos created during the boom years of the nineteenth century. They tell the story of how, ever since entering Russian culture under the influence of Catherine the Great, piano music has run through the country like blood. How these pianos travelled into this snow-bound wilderness in the first place is remarkable. That they might still be capable of making music in such a hostile landscape is nothing less than a miracle. 
 
The Lost Pianos of Siberia is an absorbing story about a piano hunt - a quixotic journey through two centuries of Russian history and eight time zones stretching across an eleventh of the world's land surface. It reveals not only an unexpected musical legacy, but profound humanity in the last place on earth you might expect to find it.

Sophy Roberts

History and travelogue combine wonderfully in this tale of colonial plunder and hubris…Sophy Roberts’ luminous new book is a journey through Africa from Zanzibar to Lake Tanganyika and back, retracing the steps of a long-forgotten expedition. Reflective, watchful, calm, Roberts is such a vivid travel writer that you forget what a brilliant historian she is. She has the water-diviner’s gift for stories in unlikely places.

Roberts writes elegantly and empathetically and part of the book's power is seeing through her astute eyes the bleak and strange fate of so many magnificent elephants.

Roberts brings to immediate life the bizarre and long-forgotten story of Belgian king Leopold II's plan to train elephants in Africa that would help plunder its resources. A deeply-researched and smoothly-written blend of travel and historical writing filled with empathy, intriguing encounters and memorable characters, not least the elephants themselves.

Luke Pepera, author of Motherland: A Journey through 500,000 Years of African Culture and Identity

Sophy Roberts takes us from stormy, desolate Donegal on to a journey into a dark corner of history, untangling the strands of Belgian king Leopold’s seemingly insane plan to use elephants from India to plunder the Congo. She weaves a rich, engrossing tapestry of greed and disregard for life, human and animal, that stretches across continents, and across time, from the late nineteenth century to this day. This is more than an account, it’s a deep dive into the avarice and complexity of colonialism, skilfully guided by a narrator whose words brings to life people, places and actions that have been set aside or glossed over. To read it is to know so much more of the world today and then, and how the past shapes the present. Few write as compellingly as Roberts, this is her as only she can write.

Amal Chatterjee, author of Across The Lakes

A cautionary tale from the early days of the Scramble for Africa, but poignant and scholarly too. Roberts writes beautifully.

Thomas Pakenham, author of The Scramble for Africa

Sophy Roberts’ chance encounter with a map leads her to a bizarre colonial project to march Indian elephants into the heart of Africa to train their unruly cousins. She retraces their journey, bringing history to life with vivid descriptions of brutal terrain and encounters with living descendants of those involved in this cruel, misguided venture. Roberts tackles difficult, sensitive subjects with careful, exquisite prose. Unputdownable.

Mary Harper, former BBC Africa editor, UN Advisor and author of Getting Somalia Wrong?

Masterfully weaving adventure, intrigue and the darker truths of colonial ambition into a story as gripping as it is eye-opening.

A brave and searching book, rich in history and fierce in spirit. The best sort of travel writing: handsome prose, teeming with humanity and an unwavering sense of wonder.

Justin Marozzi, author of Baghdad, City of Peace, City of Blood

This is a marvellous book, an important footnote to history - of Sophy Roberts' intrepid travel with a real purpose, shining a light on colonialism, Belgian and British, and their peculiar obsessions, in this case elephants, beloved creatures also colonized and exploited.

‘History and travelogue combine wonderfully in this tale of colonial plunder and hubris… Roberts is such a vivid travel writer that you forget what a brilliant historian she is. She has the water-diviner’s gift for stories in unlikely places.’ Guardian 
 
In 1879 King Leopold II of Belgium launched an ambitious plan to plunder Africa’s resources. The key to the continent, or so he thought, was its elephants – if only he could control them. And so he had four tamed Asian elephants shipped from India to the East African coast, where they were marched inland towards Congo. The aim was to establish a training school for African elephants. 
 
Following the route of this long-forgotten expedition, Roberts travels to Belgium, Iraq, India, Tanzania and Congo digging deep into the records to bring to life a compelling cast of historic characters and modern voices, from ivory dealers and powerful chiefs to birders and Catholic nuns. Vivid and poignant, A Training School for Elephants grapples with our history of animal and human exploitation and reveals an extraordinary – and enduring – tale of colonial greed, ineptitude, hypocrisy and folly.

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