Thirty years ago, the South African novelist and poet Christopher Hope was drawn to Russia by “the quality of the lies”. The myths peddled by Soviet officials had created “a society steadily falling apart; run your fingers over it and you’d feel the widening stitches. In the night they snapped one by one.” Hope’s observation of a society undone by its own falsehoods echoes throughout Rory MacLean’s gripping book, part-travelogue, part-contemporary history of Europe.
In 1989, MacLean recorded his journey from Berlin to Moscow across what was for many still Europe’s terra incognita. A united, liberal Europe had seemed tantalisingly near as walls and dictatorships tumbled, families and nations were reunited, and – it appeared – communism finally joined fascism on the scrap heap of history. Now, he retraces his steps from east to west to explore what became of that dream, and finds it battered and besieged by the resurgent forces of authoritarianism, racism and demagoguery.
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