Dreams on Hitler’s Couch

All dreamers are disappointed wanderers, and all disappointed wanderers are dreamers to a degree. Vitali Vitaliev fled the Soviet Union with his family in 1990 and in the years afterwards had to come to terms with the bewildering world of the West. This kaleidoscope of a book describes his adventures: skiing with Bill Bryson in middle America, Soho night-life, the Tasmanian elections, a curious cache of Nazi art treasures, happy Vietnamese in Norway and hopeless Aborigines on Palm Island. He buys his first western suit and a house with an indoor swimming pool, experiences the calm of Mount Athos and sees the end of the Berlin Wall. Vitaliev writes with the distinctive perceptiveness of someone who still looks at the Western world from the stance of an outsider and describes what he sees with wit, passion and bemusement in equal measure.