Shortlisted for the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year Award
'A gem of a book, informative, companionable, sometimes funny, and
wholly original. MacLean must surely be the outstanding, and most
indefatigable, traveller-writer of our time' John le Carre In 1989
the Berlin Wall fell. In that euphoric year Rory MacLean travelled
from Berlin to Moscow, exploring lands that were - for most Brits
and Americans - part of the forgotten half of Europe. Thirty years
on, MacLean traces his original journey backwards, across countries
confronting old ghosts and new fears: from revanchist Russia,
through Ukraine's bloodlands, into illiberal Hungary, and then
Poland, Germany and the UK. Along the way he shoulders an AK-47 to
go hunting with Moscow's chicken Tsar, plays video games in St
Petersburg with a cyber-hacker who cracked the US election, drops
by the Che Guevara High School of Political Leadership in a
non-existent nowhereland and meets the Warsaw doctor who tried to
stop a march of 70,000 nationalists. Finally, on the shores of Lake
Geneva, he waits patiently to chat with Mikhail Gorbachev. As
Europe sleepwalks into a perilous new age, MacLean explores how
opportunists - both within and outside of Russia, from Putin to
Home Counties populists - have made a joke of truth, exploiting
refugees and the dispossessed, and examines the veracity of
historical narrative from reportage to fiction and fake news. He
asks what happened to the optimism of 1989 and, in the shadow of
Brexit, chronicles the collapse of the European dream.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
