Pravda Ha Ha
Truth, Lies and the End of Europe
1st Edition
Published on 1. November 2019
368 pages
978-1-4088-9654-9 (ISBN)
Description
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 Carré
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.
'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
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.
More details
Edition
1. Auflage
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
ISBN-13
978-1-4088-9654-9 (9781408896549)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
08/2020
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
€13.00
Shipment within 10-20 days
Book
11/2019
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
€44.76
Article exhausted; check different version
Person
Rory MacLean is one of Britain's most expressive and adventurous travel writers. His books - which have been translated into a dozen languages - include the Sunday Times bestseller Stalin's Nose, Under the Dragon and Berlin: Imagine a City, which was named a Book of the Year by the Washington Post.
Content
- Cover
- Praise Page
- A Note on the Author
- BY THE SAME AUTHOR
- Title Page
- Contents
- Map
- Russia
- 1 Under Moscow
- 2 Over Russia
- 3 Putin's Pecker
- 4 Russia, My Russia
- 5 Terrible Beauty
- 6 Tell Me Another One
- 7 Stranger in Moscow
- 8 Beat It
- 9 Tentacles
- 10 Under the Skin
- 11 Lies Lies Lies
- 12 Sunday in St Petersburg
- 13 Cold War 2.0
- 14 Party Party (Like It's 1969)
- 15 Beauty and the Beast
- 16 Angels
- 17 London Road
- Estonia
- 18 Home
- 19 Soviet Secret Barbecue Society
- Kaliningrad
- 20 The Others
- Transnistria
- 21 Back in the USSR
- 22 Fear is a Habit
- Ukraine
- 23 Theatre of Bad Dreams
- Nightmare No. 1
- Nightmare No. 2
- Nightmare No. 3
- 24 All That Glitters
- Hungary
- 25 Not Quite Spring
- 26 Altogether Now
- 27 Down and Out in Buda and Kispest
- Poland
- 28 Independence Day
- 29 Devil's Domain
- 30 Dementia
- Germany
- 31 Beyond the Horizon
- 32 Odysseys
- 33 Wir sind das Volk
- Switzerland
- 34 Waiting for Gorby
- Britain
- 35 Jolly Ol' England
- 36 Fog in the Channel
- Acknowledgements
- Copyright Page
