Stories of the Desert and the Roads.The Moscow-Karakum-Moscow Rally

Soviet prose writer and journalist Mikhail Petrovich Loskutov (1906–1941) was born in Kursk. In the 1930s, he took part in the Moscow–Karakum–Moscow auto rally and later described this expedition in his short stories. The text of the book Tales of the Desert and the Roads is accompanied here by photographs from another rally participant – Maks Prekhner.

This book offers a rare glimpse into not only the staged, official side of a complex expedition but also the relentless daily labor of the large number of people united by the goal of conquering the "Black Sands" and testing the limits of both machine and human endurance.

This collection brings together several cycles of Mikhail Loskutov’s short stories, including Ashkhabad Nights, Journey to the Forty Hillocks, The Zeagli Stopover, and Stories of the Desert and the Roads, as well as the novella The Thirteenth Caravan – about travels in Renault-Sahara automobiles to the center of the Karakum Desert in the late 1920s.

A special place in the publication is given to the photo chronicle of the famous 1933 Moscow–Karakum–Moscow rally, captured by Maks Prekhner. This section features more than 200 photographs, many of which are published here for the first time.

The publication has been prepared and released in collaboration with the Moscow Museum of Transport and the Mardjani Foundation.