About this item
'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 CarrIn 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.
About the Author
Rory MacLean is one of Britain's most expressive and adventurous non-fiction writers. His books - which have been translated into a dozen languages -- include UK top tens Stalin's Nose and Under the Dragon as well as Berlin: Imagine a City, "the most extraordinary work of history I've ever read" according to the Washington Post which named it a Book of the Year. He has won awards from the Canada Council and the Arts Council of England and was nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary prize. "MacLean must surely be the outstanding, and most indefatigable, traveller-writer of our time," wrote John le Carré. According to late John Fowles, his work "marvellously explains why literature still lives". Rory's 14th book, Pravda Ha Ha: True Travels to the End of Europe, marks the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. In his humanitarian work, Rory has written about the missing civilians of the Yugoslav Wars for the International Committee of the Red Cross, on divided Cyprus for the UN's Committee on Missing Persons and on North Korea for the British Council. He has blogged a quarter of a million words for the Goethe Institut and made over 50 BBC radio programmes. He is Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a former member of the Executive Committee of EnglishPEN.http://www.rorymaclean.com/
