Stefan Sullivan

The Six Week Arctic Seance

As the Soviet Union collapsed, faith healing, quackery and dormant religious traditions reared their heads again. The American narrator and his friend, Arkasha, hatch a plan to search out the traces of shamanism in the remote arctic republic of Sakha-Yakutia. But the shamans have died off, and the native reindeer herders have migrated to the capital, a permafrosted sprawl of wooden sheds and Soviet cement blocks. Once settled at the dormitory of the Meatpackers Union, the duo uncovers a motley crew of local misfits and eccentrics - vodka-guzzling folk healers, shifty bear bile traders, heavy metal trance rockers, and the Miss Yakutia runner-up - all, in their own way, honoring the shamanic heritage.


Offshore in Oil Country

The hucksters of the Wild East are chronicled in this first-hand account of a Mercedes dealership in the petro-boomtown of Tyumen, Siberia. Titled the Siberian Investment Group (SIG), the firm is run by Olaf, the errant son of a Geneva arms trader. He lives far beyond his means and can’t control his secretive local partner, Kolya, a former biathlete now dabbling in the dangerous jet fuel trade. Troubled by Kolya’s increasing independence, Olaf hires the narrator - with a freshly minted PhD on Hegel and Jesus - to “build synergies” between the disconnected shell companies of the firm. The comic descent into arctic grifting serves up an intimate portrait of the money-grab culture that defined Russia in the 1990s.