Overview

 An in-depth exploration of Ukraine through encounters with the many different people who live there.   “Will someone pay for the spilled blood? No. Nobody.” Mikhail Bulgakov composed this ominous and prophetic phrase in Kiev amid the turmoil of the Russian civil war. Since then, Ukrainian borders have shifted constantly, and its people have suffered numerous military foreign interventions. Ukraine has only existed as an independent state since 1991, and what exactly it was before then is controversial among its people as well as its European neighbors. In Black Earth: A Journey through the Ukraine, journalist and celebrated travel writer Jens Mühling takes readers across the country amid the ousting of former president Viktor Yanukovych and the Russian annexation of Crimea. Mühling delves deep into daily life in Ukraine, narrating his encounters with Ukrainian nationalists and old communists, Crimean Tatars and Cossacks, smugglers, and soldiers. Black Earth connects all these stories to convey an unconventional and unfiltered view of Ukraine, a country at the crossroads of Europe and Asia and the center of countless conflicts.   In this paperback edition, a new preface is included that takes into account recent developments up to the 2022 war between Russia and Ukraine.  

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9781914982002

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Reviews

"PRAISES FOR A JOURNEY INTO RUSSIA; 'There is a shock of discovery and a shot of pleasure on every page.' The Times; 'A compelling story of an author's journey into deepest Siberia in a quest to meet a woman determined to remain cut off from the outside world' Sunday Telegraph; 'A Journey Into Russia [...] takes Jens Muhling into Russia's riven terrain from Kiev and Moscow to St Petersburg and Siberia and on towards the people of the Steppes, unveiling individual tales of people surviving against the odds.' The Scotsman; '[Muhling] meets a bewildering variety of ""old believers"" in a broader sense, from members of the sectarian Orthodox Church..., through stubbornly Leninist former Soviet citizens, to newly minted Slavonic pagans. They all want to tell Muhling their life stories which, in his empathetic retelling, provide glimpses into other lives that are vivid and frequently moving.'TLS"

PRAISES FOR A JOURNEY INTO RUSSIA; 'There is a shock of discovery and a shot of pleasure on every page.' The Times; 'A compelling story of an author's journey into deepest Siberia in a quest to meet a woman determined to remain cut off from the outside world' Sunday Telegraph; 'A Journey Into Russia [...] takes Jens Muhling into Russia's riven terrain from Kiev and Moscow to St Petersburg and Siberia and on towards the people of the Steppes, unveiling individual tales of people surviving against the odds.' The Scotsman; '[Muhling] meets a bewildering variety of old believers in a broader sense, from members of the sectarian Orthodox Church..., through stubbornly Leninist former Soviet citizens, to newly minted Slavonic pagans. They all want to tell Muhling their life stories which, in his empathetic retelling, provide glimpses into other lives that are vivid and frequently moving.'TLS

Author Information

Jens Muhling was the editor of a German newspaper in Moscow for two years, and has been working for the Berlin newspaper, Der Tagesspiegel, since 2005. His features and essays on Eastern Europe have won him several awards. He is the author of A Journey into Russia (2014) and Troubled Water: A Journey Around the Black Sea (2021).

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