Notion Press, India’s leading self-publishing platform presents- A Different Degree by Dr Hari Kumar, an autobiography that follows the journey of a young man with a billion dreams. 

The book chronicles the life of an aspiring doctor from a rural village in southern India. He goes to Moscow in the early seventies at the height of the Cold War to study medicine. Hari vividly portrays his experiences of learning the Russian language, facing the notorious winter and later rotating through the different disciplines in medicine. With interesting insights and encounters narrated with humour, A Different Degree is an engrossing and fascinating read. 

The author shares his experience of getting to know the common people of Soviet society, about whom the outside world knew very little of. Hari describes the culture, habits, joys, frustrations and dreams of the people of the USSR at great length. His experiences in Russia were exciting and life in Moscow, eventful. The book will entertain and enlighten, make you laugh and cry and most importantly, inspire you.

In 1980, Hari left the USSR. He is now a consultant orthopaedic surgeon in Doncaster in the UK. His area of expertise is complex hip surgery.

Hari left Moscow, but Moscow was never far from his mind. Three and a half decades later, he attended a reunion of his medical school batch in Moscow. By this time, the USSR was history and Moscow was the capital of a different country -The Russian Federation, with a different social system – capitalism. The nostalgic reunion was an exciting, memorable one and an eye-opener.

A seemingly simple question lingered in Hari’s mind – ‘Was life better for the common man in the socialist USSR or today’s capitalist Russia’? In this book, he digs deep to find an honest answer to this tricky question.

A Different Degree by Hari Kumar is now available on Amazon, Flipkart and the Notion Press online store. Grab your copy now!