Sophy Roberts brings readers on an unconventional hunting expedition — wandering through post-Soviet Siberia seeking pre-Soviet grand pianos. That's her premise in "The Lost Pianos of Siberia," and ...

Special Correspondent Sophy Roberts is an award-winning writer based in England. You’re on a sandy beach in the heart of Africa—only you’re looking at hippos and listening to the hoots of the ...

In The Lost Pianos of Siberia (Doubleday/Grove Atlantic, 2020), British writer Sophy Roberts uses the piano to channel the past and tell the stories of people's lives through earlier cycles of Russian ...

You have spent since 2016 working on this book about Siberia. You made eight trips, and spent many, many months on the road. All to travel in a place people were mostly taken against their will. Why?

If you were a kid of a certain era obsessed with adventures in far-flung lands, nothing thrilled like the 19th-century Western exploration of Africa. Burton, Grant and Speke embarking from Zanzibar to ...

In 1879, while the Great Powers were scrambling to carve up Africa, Belgian king Leopold II came up with the “bizarre idea” that sending four Indian elephants to the continent would give him a ...

What might seem an absurd point of entry turns out to be a very adept way to explore. That Ipatiev House instrument was one of many that eluded Roberts's sleuthing skills, but it’s the excitement of ...