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Byzantium Endures (1981) is a novel by Michael Moorcock. It is the first in the Pyat Quartet tetralogy. The book is written in the first person from the point of view of unreliable narrator Maxim Arturovitch Pyatnitski, whose posthumous notes Moorcock claims to have transcribed. Pyat, as he is also known, describes in the novel his adventures in Tsarist then Revolutionary Russia. Born on 1 January 1900 in Kiev, Pyat dreams from early on to become a great inventor and engineer. His widowed mother, lacking any means to support his higher education, sends him at age 16 to a relative in Odessa, where Pyat is introduced to bohemian life, cocaine and sexual adventures. Making a good impression on his relative, he secures a position at a technical university in St. Petersburg. After having failed to obtain a degree, he returns to Kiev, where he manages to profit from his knowledge of machinery and runs a successful repair enterprise. The revolutionary and post revolutionary civil war bring him again to Odessa; on the way, he aligns with whatever group is in power. Finally, he manages to escape by ship to western Europe. Throughout all his wanderings, Pyat will not pass over any opportunity for self-aggrandisement, despite being a genuinely despicable character. The character appears to have been addicted to cocaine and sex. He is also obsessively antisemitic despite multiple hints that his father was Jewish.

Tuva or Bust! (1991) is a book by Ralph Leighton about the author and his friend Richard Feynman’s attempt to travel to Tuva.

The introduction explains how Feynman challenged Leighton, at the time a high school math teacher, “Whatever happened to Tannu Tuva?” Since Feynman had a reputation as a prankster and had proven himself entirely capable of inventing a fictional country name to confound friends, Leighton assumed it was made up. But the country existed, and the pair became fascinated with this hard-to-reach destination, at the geographic center of Asia, which had become a republic in the Soviet Union. They made it a goal to travel there, which, for Americans in the late 1970s and early 1980s, was extremely difficult.

In many ways, the attempt to travel to Tuva is an allegory for Feynman’s perpetual curiosity to discover new things, and how he inspired his friends, admirers and protégés to do the same. During their decade-long quest to travel to Tuva, Feynman was suffering from cancer, and died shortly before the visas finally arrived; this book describes “Richard Feynman’s last adventure”.

The book describes the difficulties and various attempts Leighton and Feynman made to obtain permission to travel to Tuva. It also describes the culture, language and history of the place. Included with some editions of the book is a small plastic turntable record of Tuvan throat singing.

Feynman never managed to get to Tuva. Instead of him, the trip was realized by his daughter Michelle. Michelle Feynman came to Tuva on June 8 2009.