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Pravda Ha Ha: True Travels to the End of Europe
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20/99
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31/99
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About This Book
An unsettling, timely, and darkly comic exposé of Putin's Russia and European disintegration from highly acclaimed travel writer Rory MacLean. 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.
Reviews
"he hears 'the echo of marching boots'—a symptom, mainly, of his bleak mood ..."
"an engrossing travelogue that's both trenchantly observant and deeply felt."
"MacLean is not writing a textbook but rather a series of richly detailed anecdotes about his experiences."
"Having used his characteristic talent of drawing insight from those he meets, the author offers fascinating profiles throughout ..."
"It's formulaic travel journalism: Go somewhere for a couple of days, meet some people, ask them questions, report the interesting things they say."
"What he fails to demonstrate in investigative tenacity, he makes up for in hyper-coloured absurdity and gleeful caricature ..."
"Much of this ambitious book is not an easy read, with stories of forced labor, human trafficking and worse in Europe's heart of darkness ..."
"But if his colourful encounters with Europeans from alt-right Polish executives to German neo-fascists offer a fascinating and grim portrait of our current predicament, how compelling is MacLean's explanation of how we got here?"
"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 ..."
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