The Border

The Border by Erika Fatland – translated by Kari Dickson (2020 MacLehose Press softcover 611pp)

 

Probably the timeliest book I’ve read – 20 minutes after I finished reading this book last Thursday (24 February 2022) I checked the news headlines on my phone and found that V. V. Putin had launched his ‘special operation’ against the country of Ukraine. This book provided me with an excellent education about Russia’s rocky relations with its neighbours over the last 1000 or so years.

Norwegian anthropologist and writer Erika Fatland had the idea for this book in a dream after completing an earlier book about the former Soviet central Asian ‘stans’. To her surprise nobody had ever written a book about travelling across all the nations bordering Russia before so she set about bringing her dream to life.

The first section recounts her journey by sea from Russia’s furthest eastern point westward from Asia to Northern Europe. She talks with her fellow passengers and finds out their stories (many are cashed-up elderly people on the trips of their lifetimes). Along with the day-to-day travel reportage, Fatland digresses to tell us the history of the locations and the many personalities involved.

Her land Journey starts in North Korea, from the capital to the Chinese border. Again, we learn all the history of the nation and the Korean peninsular in general. After a trip to some little-known Chinese cities, she moves on to Mongolia and its complex history as a pawn traded between China and the USSR. After a couple of the central Asian nations, we follow Fatland to her favourite location – Georgia. She loves the people and the food and despairs at the 2008 Russian invasion and the break-away region of Abkhazia. Along the way she talks to many local all of which have heart-breaking or uplifting stories to tell. Ukraine comes next and she spends a lot of time describing the history of war and conflicts there. Belarus and its dictator are next and then on to the Baltic states who keep a wary eye out for Russia. Poland, Finland and Norway complete the journey – 14 nations in all and all of which apart from Norway had been attacked and or invaded by Russia in the past. We learn a lot of Russian history too, from the opportunistic Tsars to the ordinary people who have suffered so much through the years.

I really enjoyed the well-balanced mix between contemporary travel writing and detailed history. There’s quite a lot of humour and asides when things threaten to become too dark and heavy. The translation from Norwegian to English is top-notch, only a handful of passages left me scratching my head as to the meaning.

Entertaining and educational, what more could you want?