Between East and West Across the Borderlands of Europe

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.

Anne Applebaum is a columnist for The Washington Post and the author of several history books, including Gulag, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction, and Iron Curtain, which was a National Book Award Finalist. She is a former visiting professor at the London School of Economics, a former member of The Washington Post editorial board, a former deputy editor of The Spectator magazine, and a former Warsaw correspondent of The Economist. Her essays appear in The New York Review of Books, The New Republic, Foreign Policy and Foreign Affairs.
 
 
www.anneapplebaum.com