★ 09/16/2019
The hopes of 1989 have dimmed into illiberal authoritarianism according to this tragicomic view of post-communist Europe. British travel writer Maclean (Stalin’s Nose) reprises a journey he made after the fall of the Berlin Wall into the democratic ferment of Eastern Europe, a region now mired in klepto-capitalism, quasi-dictatorship, and ethnonationalism. He spends much time in a semibarbarous Russia, firing assault rifles and eating a hallucinogenic mushroom species—dubbed “Putin’s Pecker”—with an oligarch; viewing a tank parade; and visiting the Internet Research Agency, headquarters of Russian social media subversion. Other stops include Estonia, where the population eternally prepares for guerilla war against Russian invaders; Hungary, where homeless vagrants spout diatribes against an imaginary migrant menace; and Poland, where sleek media professionals do the same. Threaded throughout is the author’s engagement with a Nigerian migrant trying to get from Moscow, where nuns allegedly amputated his toe, to England. Maclean combines vivid reportage (“Moscow unfolded like a flipbook... newly gilded onion domes, low-slung Maseratis and Little Potato fast-food stalls.... Fuming policemen swaggered across the broad boulevards, their truncheons knocking against their jackboots”) with unabashed soapboxing (“I yelled at the drunks... saying that lies had to be exposed and evil held at bay”). The result is an engrossing travelogue that’s both trenchantly observant and deeply felt. (Jan.)
"Recounted in poetic prose with context from pop-history and cultural commentary, MacLean’s picaresque adventures include poignant reunions and chance encounters with a colorful cast of characters ranging from intellectuals to proletarians, tycoons to destitute migrants . . . MacLean is a sympathetic and perceptive guide, his characters memorable partly for confirming and sometimes subverting stereotypes." - The New York Times Book Review
"Readable and often grimly entertaining . . . Mr. MacLean has an acute grasp how a people’s history can be rewritten to reshape its future." - Wall Street Journal
“A trek through Eastern Europe exposes a region in retrograde, as fragile postwar optimism gives way to predatory capitalism and the reanimation of age-old prejudices.” —Booklist, starred review
“[Pravda Ha Ha] does 1984 one better, because the dystopia MacLean describes already exists.” —Mark Bowden, Air Mail
“MacLean combines vivid reportage with unabashed soapboxing. The result is an engrossing travelogue that's both trenchantly observant and deeply felt” —Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Russia, in MacLean's telling, is a morally diseased place where truth (pravda) has become a joke… he observes that the country's long-running tolerance of political lies has transformed into cultivation of untruth as a form of art, and in a final degradation, to laughter at the very notion of truth. This process, he suggests, has spread over Eastern Europe like a storm front and has left once-hopeful liberalizing states (Hungary, Poland) vulnerable to authoritarian backsliding and manipulation into xenophobia and racism.” —American Scholar
“The acclaimed British travel writer and historian retraces his trip after the fall of the Berlin Wall to explore what happened to the hopes and promises of 1989 . . . Featuring his characteristic talent of drawing insight from those he meets, [MacLean] offers fascinating profiles throughout . . . Another engrossing book from an author who is much more than just a travel writer.” —Kirkus Reviews
“MacLean's book is immensely readable. The history and politics of Eastern Europe are tackled here with humor and dry wit.” —BookPage
“[A] gripping book, part-travelogue, part contemporary history of Europe … MacLean is an accomplished writer; his immersive prose crackles with wit and wry humour, and captures scenes and personalities with aplomb” —Daniel Beer, Guardian
“[Maclean] writes with heart and draws in readers with his captivating experiences. Fans of travelogs, history buffs, and those with an interest in Russia and the former U.S.S.R. will thoroughly enjoy.” —Library Journal
“This is a tremendous thing that MacLean is creating; a new kind of history, in several dimensions and innumerable moods, that adds up to – across the span of his books – a great and continuing work of literature” —Jan Morris
“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 Carré
“No one writes quite like Rory MacLean” —Robert Macfarlane
12/01/2019
In this timely look at the former Soviet Union, British travel writer Maclean (Stalin's Nose), goes back to Russia and areas of the former U.S.S.R. to discover what went wrong after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union two years later. He describes the initial euphoria at newfound freedoms, the hard times afterward as the "USSR imploded," and the lack of freedom under the current leadership of Putin. Maclean brings the current reality of Russians to light with vivid descriptions of visits with various characters and their views on life and the future, which at first seem surprising, but quickly fall into a recognizable pattern. From a Russian oligarch with teeth like "broken rocks" who made a fortune selling mushrooms and a young Nigerian immigrant frantically searching for a way to freedom, to a quick look at the chilling Internet Research Agency and the havoc it has wreaked, the author writes with heart and draws in readers with his captivating experiences. VERDICT Fans of travelogs, history buffs, and those with an interest in Russia and the former U.S.S.R. will thoroughly enjoy.—Holly Hebert, Middle Tennessee State Univ., Murfreesboro
2019-09-24
The acclaimed British travel writer and historian retraces his trip after the fall of the Berlin Wall to explore what happened to the hopes and promises of 1989.
This time, MacLean (In North Korea: Lives and Lies in the State of Truth, 2017, etc.) traveled in the reverse direction, from Moscow to Berlin. His six-month journey included Estonia, Ukraine, Hungary, Poland, East Germany, and little-known Transnistria. As the author relates, the promise of democracy lasted only so long. Drawn by the newly dynamic economies, the money- and power-hungry moved in. The rise of nationalism—which built on Nazi theorist Carl Schmitt's teachings that Germans' utopia was stolen by existentially different and alien opponents—has created enmity and violence toward migrants, the poor, and other marginalized groups. Having used his characteristic talent of drawing insight from those he meets, the author offers fascinating profiles throughout: the Russian chicken czar who shared his rare hallucinogenic truffle, one of the many oligarchs enjoying the new wealth, at least for the moment; and a Nigerian refugee who told the harrowing story of his unflinching determination to get to London. One of MacLean's contacts described how Russian tacticians were able, by 2007, to shut down Estonian cyberspace and then take over Georgian government websites and interfere in Crimea, Ukraine, France, and the U.S. Not just a travelogue, this is a consistently engaging yet fearsome book that effectively traces the rise of national identity as a myth that paves the way for racism, xenophobia, and even genocide. "Thirty years ago," writes MacLean, "Europe became whole again….In Berlin, Prague and Moscow I'd danced with so many others on the grave of dictatorships….I convinced myself that our generation was an exception in history, that we'd learned to live by different rules, that we were bound together by freedom….I've remade this journey—backwards—to try to understand how it went wrong."
Another engrossing book from an author who is much more than just a travel writer.
