Lost in Moscow

By Kirsten Koza

When most parents consider sending their child to summer camp, they imagine a sunny lake a few hours out of the city. In 1977, the parents of 11-year-old Kirsten Koza sent their pigtailed, sass-talking offspring on a summer trip to the Soviet Union--with only fifty dollars in her pocket. Lost in Moscow tells the story of Kirsten's summer camp hijinks: evading the Soviet Red Army in a foot race through and around Red Square, receiving extended radiation treatments for a minor case of tonsillitis, and making a gut-churning, unauthorized parachute jump--without being totally certain whether her parachute would open or even stay on.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0888012829
• ISBN13: 9780888012821
• Release Date: November 2003
• Publisher: Turnstone Press
• Length: 300 Pages
• Weight: 0.99 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.4" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

An Amazing Camp Adventure

Lost in Moscow was so much fun to read, I found myself wiggling with giggles at several points. Kirsten Koza did such a great job re-creating the secret thoughts, angst, fears and dreams of her 11-year-old-self that I felt like I was right there as a kid, too! It's been awhile since I've thought about expressions we used in the seventies - and how much passion and fun we had with them ... and toe socks! However, this Camp experience was so bizarre and harrowing that, at times, I found myself feeling more like a parent - wanting to get that girl out of there! My 15-year-old daughter was also impressed with this book - and the things she learned about the USSR were quite an eye-opener for her. She now tells me I should have forced her to keep a journal at a younger age, so she could write like this too!Kirsten has a nice, natural style of writing, with dialogue and descriptive settings that put me right in the scene. Bravo! I'm looking forward to her next book!

Wishing I could read more

This story is an unusual find - I'm not sure if it should be classified as a travel book, an autobiography, or a study in human behaviour - regardless, it is a fascinating and engaging look at the thoughts, feelings, and escapades of a young girl on a madcap journey to summer camp in Russia. While I found this book initially hard to get into, once I was past the first part describing getting to Russia, I then found it very hard to put down. In fact, by the end of the book I was wishing I could read about the next chapter in Kirsten's story - what really happened to her as a result of those radiation treatments? How did her experience in Russia help to shape her into the adult she is today? The author has the uncanny ability of making the reader feel young again. I wondered at first whether this hilarious story was for pre-teens (the age of the young Kirsten in the book) or for adults. I believe that it could be enjoyed by anyone in the 15 plus age group; however, the advantage of being an adult is that you can remember having similar feelings and it takes you back - kind of a wonderful feeling that teenagers just wouldn't appreciate yet. The author certainly does not hold back from sharing her gut reactions, inadequacies, and human failings, and this is refreshing. In fact, this is part of the charm of this book - Kirsten admits to all kinds of crazy things and honest feelings that you wish you could admit about your own childhood. As a result, reading her story was very cathartic - it brought up memories of childhood feelings that I have kept well buried for more than 40 years! All in all, a delightful story - although I'm still waiting for the real "sex" that was promised on the book jacket. But I guess that chapter of her life could be yet another hilarious story for Kirsten to tell.

Summer camp -- so familiar, so alien.

This book took me back to summer camp -- someplace I thought I'd never want to go again. So much of it was familiar, being 11, when everything was so wondrous, yet scary. At last, being allowed to taste (or to sneak) some of the world's offerings, yet with those treats, encountering the responsibilities that come with freedom, and the consequences of our actions -- realising that you can hurt other people, without even meaning to. Lost in Moscow brought me back to that important time, which in itself would have been worth the read. But as a travel book, it went two steps further, taking me to two places I'd never be able to go to or understand on my own: being an 11-year-old girl, and being one of them in 1980s Russia. But this all sounds too heavy. The book evokes this time and place through a series of hilarious episodes taking place over the course of a bizarre cultural exchange trip. Its humour doesn't come from trite punchlines, but from the universal human joys and weaknesses that this young person discovers. Disclosure: I know the author. Contrary to what you might think, this is not a good thing when reading a book. You go in with the dread fear that the work isn't going to live up to your expectations and that you'll have to face this person again with this knowledge. But the book is honest, the book is engaging, and the book is fun. And as Cecil Dawkins once said to Natalie Goldberg (as quoted in Goldberg's Wild Mind) "This book should be very successful. When you are done with it, you know the author better. That's all a reader really wants: to know the author better." I came away from this book knowing Kirsten in a way I never have before. I respect her fearlessness at exposing her younger self's ignorances and weaknesses, and I applaud her ability -- which she still has -- to ask "What is all this about? Why is it that way?" Best of all, really weird stuff happens to her, and we get to read about it.