Steinbeck has a fascinating perspective on Russia and the Russian people.
He’s both straight-talking and very caring. It’s almost a Louis Theroux-esque style of unwittingly falling into situations and going along with them, by which I mean constantly eating the endless quantities of food people give him and Capo.
The book is hilarious too: he has a charming relationship with Capo (the photographer) on the trip and has gems of interactions with Russian people (one woman said to him “if God had consulted the cucumber before he made man, there would be less unhappy women in the world”).
It’s fitting, since he captures people and their personalities individually, I can’t think of a better author to express love for a people through observation and the eating of their food.
Even at this most fraught of times, during the period of the iron curtain, we find that people everywhere are kind, and hate war.