‘Berezina’ Review: Chasing an Epic Fail
A road trip from Moscow to Paris, tracing the route of the French retreat after Napoleon’s invasion of Russia.

'In “Berezina: On Three Wheels From Moscow to Paris Chasing Napoleon’s Epic Fail,” Sylvain Tesson, a French writer and traveler, recounts a journey he took with four comrades roughly retracing the French retreat. This is bloody ground to tread...Mr. Tesson’s book, published in France in 2015 and now translated by Katherine Gregor, takes the form of a travelogue, each chapter devoted to a single day on the road. Accompanying the author are two Frenchmen (Gras and Goisque) and two Russians (Vitaly and Vassily). The five ride on Ural motorcycles equipped with sidecars, and the lousy condition of the vehicles becomes a recurring joke: “These machines are robotics of the Soviet industry,” Mr. Tesson says of the Urals just before departing from Moscow. “They promise adventure. You can never tell if they’ll start and, once launched, no one knows if they’ll stop....”'

https://www.wsj.com/articles/berezina-review-chasing-an-epic-fail-11573167642