Author's Note Introduction: The Muzhik PART ONE Red Circle Against the Square: Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors Crime and Disorder (Repeat) She Called Me a Romantic, the Bitch! The Interpenetration of Light with Sorrow Elektro-Shock Lady in La-La Land To the Dacha with Two Monsters Is This Yours? Everyone's Dandy in Goon City The Two-Centimetre Question Spiritual Danger The Styx Is a River That Runs from the Heart Flatheads at Twelve O'Clock High Crocodile Shaslyk, Anyone? The Square Is the Icon of Our Age PART TWO Black Beyond the Urals: The Choice Between Italian Shoes and the Exotic Pahlavan Makhmud: Poet, Champion Wrestler, and Occasional Hat-Maker Three Girls Named Star At the Sign of the Blue Tongue Who Was Natalie Wood? Notes from the Underground To the Summer Pastures Lonely Penitent's Guide to the World's Worst Trips Welcome to Kashgar City, Big Noses The House of Stones and Earth The Yellow King's Kids Nocturnal Brightness: The Gods of Cloud, Rain, Wind, and Thunder PART THREE White Life as a Horse: Midnight Border Crossing The Bare Texts of Its Boundaries Karakorum So What Is Your National Pride? Twenty-One Taras, or, I Married a Mongolian Train-Trader Baikal About the Dress They Sold the Cow For Epilogue: The Joke Acknowledgements Some Classic Works for Further Reading.