Between East and West
Books | History / Europe / Baltic States
Anne Applebaum
In 1991, Anne Applebaum, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Gulag, Iron Curtain and Red Famine, took a three-month road trip through the borderlands between the fallen Soviet Union and Europe—lands that became Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania and Moldova. In her iconic reportage, which has become indispensable history, she captures the harrowing story of a region that is once again threatened by Russia.An extraordinary journey into the past and present of the lands east of Poland and west of Russia—an area defined throughout its history by colliding empires. Traveling from the former Soviet naval center of Kaliningrad on the Baltic to the Black Sea port of Odessa, Anne Applebaum encounters a rich range of competing cultures, religions, and national aspirations. In reasserting their heritage, the inhabitants of the borderlands attempt to build a future grounded in their fractured ancestral legacies. In the process, neighbors unearth old conflicts, devote themselves to recovering lost culture, and piece together competing legends to create a new tradition. Rich in surprising encounters and vivid characters, Between East and West brilliantly illuminates the soul of the borderlands and the shaping power of the past.
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Author
Anne Applebaum
Pages
320
Publisher
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published Date
2017-06-13
ISBN
0525433198 9780525433194
Community ReviewsSee all
"I bought this book expecting a history and analysis of the borderlands of Eastern Europe and its messy relationship with nationalism and ethnicity. Instead, this book was a bit of a heartless travelogue. I’ve never read a travelogue before, and I don’t think I will be reading one again after this. While Applebaum’s history narratives are well researched and written, her own experiences are not. I was a little shocked at how condescending and derogatory she gets when describing the wide variety of people she meets. She constantly highlights when a person is “fat” or that she is surprised one woman has all her teeth. It felt like she was the ultimate judger for these people and I started to trust her recollection of what they had said less and less. Her thoughts on the people of Eastern Europe started reminding me of some of the Western travel diaries from the late 1700s…incredibly prejudiced. What was especially strange was how flat and lifeless her own character in her diaries was presented. Despite their short time in her book, everyone else had so much more personality than Applebaum, who besides narrating the history and thinking horrible things about others appearances, only makes the occasional comment or question and nothing else. I don’t really know who Applebaum is besides someone who is very judgmental. I’m really disappointed with this one but I hope her other works will have more merit and will pass less judgement when telling the histories of foreign places."
Madeline