Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience

I was drawn to this book after spending several months in West Berlin (in deepest Kretzberg) in the late 1980', and re-visited in 2018. I thought that there would be a morr positive experience 30 years later so was interested to read how the author found many things to now be worse, or different in a similar way (if that makes sense!). I'm not sure that I always agree with his politics, but the journey and lessons learned are well worth reading.

In early 1990, Rory Maclean traveled from Berlin to Moscow in a Trabant, documenting the tremendous changes Central and Eastern Europe was going through. 30 years after, he is back for an update, more or less on the footsteps of his first journey (published and multi-awarded as Stalin´s Nose, that I haven´t read it yet, therefore I may miss a couple of references).

There are completely new realities settled since: the oligarchs in Russia, the cyberattacks, the immigration from outside Europe, the old myths and a new golden age of mystifications.

Writing travel stories is mostly a subjective endeavour, like writing in general. Every writer, journalist or blogger and travel enthusiast makes a selection based on his professional, personal and academic background. A historian will be interested in facts from the past reflected into the present, the journalist of the latest events and political skirmishes, the cultural writer about the specific spiritual works encountered around the way.

In Pravda HaHa the Canadian-British writer Rory Maclean is talking with people, new and old acquaintances, hearing their histories of life in the new realities. Although he may have a plan of people he wants to meet, some of them part of his journey 30 years ago, there is the spontaneous human contact which makes the best of the story. Like, for instance, the Michael Jackson fan Sami, the Nigerian illegal immigrant he will help to get out of the (new) Russia.

One of the many reasons I love to read travelogues is for the huge diversity of characters and stories. If you are reading the good ones, there is rarely a story which may repeat itself. Rory Maclean repertoire of adventures is a high-end human selection. He is going harvesting with an minigarch (not an oligarch) a phallus shaped truffle mushroom (locally named pipiska putina), is playing in a casino in Kaliningrad, is interviewing the then social media star of the Transnistrian diplomacy. Are times changing so fast? Are those tremendous changes a firm ´good bye´ to the past?

Rather the opposite, among the old and the new generation, there are old behaviors reapprehended. A certain wariness of not stepping out lines, an acceptance that the direction of the things is decided elsewhere and there is not other way than to follow. And there are the dreams of impossible greatness shared in common, but with a different content in Russia, Poland or Hungary. What about the German state of Saxony, introduced as a kind of German Texas? Where Rory Maclean is checking his priviledge of enjoying freedom of speech and movement, young or less young people in Central and Eastern Europe want to build more walls because ´xenophobes only stand in their own shoes, of course´.

But what is Europe nowadays? How do you define it? Is the so-called West safer from illusions? ´Where there is the real end of Europe? I once thought it to be a physical place, perhaps the line of the river Oder or the Urals. I realise now that it is not a freak of geography and far more a question of culture and morality, a matter of principles. It´s the point where antique forms of identity clash with modernity, where tolerance, decency and a certain way of thinking end, where openness meet a wall´.

In fact, there is a very long discussion with no end in sight. 30 years after the end of the Cold War, there are many things boiling hot in this part of Europe. And as a matter of fact, everywhere. Travel stories are one of the most direct way to connect to those nascent realities.



Rating: 3.5 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered by the publisher in exchange for an honest review

I’m not a great fan of travelogues. Too often the author feels a need to put him or herself centre-stage and adopt a faintly mocking tone towards the people they meet, searching out, it feels, for the absurd in order to demonstrate their own superiority to the benighted natives. Rory MacLean doesn’t do that here. He sets out on his journey in the interests of discovery and truth, and I found it a compelling journey indeed. In 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell and the Eastern Bloc opened up to the west, MacLean set out to explore this previously hidden part of the world. Now, 30 years later, he retraces his steps to find out what has changed, what has stayed the same, what the future might hold. He doesn’t assume prior knowledge in the reader and succinctly and accessibly explains the history and the current situation in an intelligent and thoughtful way. I sometime felt that he got a bit carried away with his language and some of the writing seemed overblown and striving too hard for effect. (“…tanks shook the earth, rent the air and caused a child to drop her banana ice-cream cone.” Was it really a banana one? Would it have made a difference if it had been a strawberry one? Too much detail?) And I do wonder about some of the incredible coincidences that happen pretty regularly on his travels. However, I’ve travelled enough in Russia myself to appreciate that the absurd and the surreal can exist side-by-side with the everyday, so perhaps I should have more faith. All in all, I enjoyed accompanying MacLean on his journey; I learnt a lot and gained a better understanding of many issues. This is much more than just a travel book – it’s history and sociology and politics combined and a genuine attempt to ferret out the truth. Highly recommended.

There's lots to enjoy, and even more to be worried about, in Rory Maclean's journey to Russia and back through Europe to the UK "to try to understand how it went wrong". The Russia section, which is the bulk of the book, is the most gripping and astounding section, although its effect is slightly reduced by the fact it follows a string of books examining Russia's current position (the best of which is probably Pomerantsev's Nothing is True...). After that it loses way a little but the parallels Maclean draws between the rise of the right in Poland and Hungary and Brexit are fascinating and well-made. Can't decide if the title is genius or a mistake though.

While I can't claim to agree with some of the politics here, this book offers a thoroughly interesting charge through Eastern Europe, and the fall-out from the end of the USSR and the dismantling of the Berlin Wall. We see a Russia ridiculously weaponised, claiming any patch of land next to it is a threat, we see the edginess that brings to life in places like Estonia and Ukraine, and so on through the old Soviet Bloc countries. Meanwhile our author is not the only person travelling with England as his end destination… Like I say, if you have the affinity for those places (and I do, having been to most of the countries on this book's itinerary) this will interest, but for a book that lambasts people for disbelieving the truth it can be rather free with just half a story. So Putin got the throne by inventing domestic terrorism? Well, there was terrorism elsewhere anyway for him to need to react to – the outvasion of Chechnya just one instance. He doesn't quite go the reductio ad absurdum route to attribute the rise of the far right in eastern Europe to what he does, but he's close at times. And he seems to be desperate to gloss over the post-2008 Europe with the spirit of a hard-core "you're racist, you!" leftie Bremoaner. The spirit of his Euro-zone, post-War, post-Wall, post-Crash, is seen if you fly to Crete. You land on a German-owned runway, go through a German-built airport and drive to your hotel on German-built motorways. Greece will never be able to pay the debts she's run up, but if that attitude to snatching ruins and making a profit out of it is better than the attitude of our author's Russian oligarch friends, then I'm stumped as to why.

So the liberal bent of this book does skew it away from my tastes somewhat (only somewhat, mind), and I'd debate whether to put it on a travel shelf to start with, so much of it concerns geopolitics and sociology. But it is still a firmly interesting read, for all its frustrating elements. Three and a half stars in the end from me.

I was in West Berlin the day the wall fell and earlier that year I had visited Moscow, I have never visited a reunified Germany or a dissolute USSR and after reading this book I am not in a hurry to visit Moscow anytime soon, this book should be sold in the horror section because although the tale is engaging and interesting the story is horrific