The Glass Wall
Lives on the Baltic Frontier
-
- 7,49 €
-
- 7,49 €
Publisher Description
This journey to the edge of Europe mixes history, travelogue and oral testimony to spellbinding and revelatory effect.
Few countries have suffered more from the convulsions and bloodshed of twentieth-century Europe than those in the eastern Baltic. Small nations such as the Baltic States of Latvia and Estonia found themselves caught between the giants of Germany and Russia, on a route across which armies surged or retreated. Subjected to foreign domination and conquest since the Northern crusades in the twelfth century, these lands faced frequent devastation as Germans, Russians and Swedish colonisers asserted control of the territory, religion, government, culture and inhabitants.
The Glass Wall features an extraordinary cast of characters – contemporary and historical, foreign and indigenous – who have lived and fought in the Baltic and made the atmosphere of what was often thought to be western Europe’s furthest redoubt. Too often it has seemed to be the destiny of this region to be the front line of other people’s wars. By telling the stories of warriors and victims, of philosophers and Baltic Barons, of poets and artists, of rebels and emperors, and others who lived through years of turmoil and violence, Max Egremont reveals a fascinating part of Europe, on a frontier whose limits may still be in doubt.
'Fascinating . . . a rich, nuanced account of life on "the Baltic frontier"' - The Times
'Excellent' - Daily Mail
'Extraordinary' - Literary Review
'Exemplary' - Economist
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Historian and novelist Egremont (Some Desperate Glory) delivers a lyrical if scattershot portrait of the Baltic nations of Estonia and Latvia. Visiting towns, estates, churches, and castles "made, destroyed and remade over centuries," he describes a history of conquest and subjugation from the Crusades in the Middle Ages up through the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. Highlighting the region's long history of being dominated by outsiders, Egremont profiles George Armistead, the Latvian-born son of a British merchant family who became mayor of Riga in 1901, and delves into the love affairs of European aristocrats in the Baltic countryside, noting that the novel The Leopard was inspired by author Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's relationship with his Latvian German wife, Alexandra von Wolff. Unfortunately, Egremont doesn't shed much light on current tensions between the Baltic countries and neighboring Russia, and his interviews with elderly locals fail to clarify if they're better off today (when "money rules now instead of occupiers") than they were under the Germans or the Soviets. Those looking for insights into contemporary Baltic life and the region's future will be disappointed. Despite Egremont's evocative prose and deep knowledge of the region, this travelogue is stuck in the past.