Not a sight you’d expect to see on the steppes: a tulip-filled expanse. Never would I have associated this beautiful but relatively domesticated flower with a wild place of spontaneous blooming.
‘And the steppe has its own riches. In spring the young tulip-filled steppe is an ocean of colours. The camel-grass is still green; its harsh spines are still soft and tender…’
For another surprising view of the steppe, see also ‘A noble, ancient world’.
Source: Life and Fate, Vasily Grossman; trans. Robert Chandler (New York: New York Review Books, 2006 (1985)), p. 292
