This Cursed Beautiful Land

'Propulsive … a taut thriller of high stakes' PATRICK RADDEN KEEFE 'Beautiful writing … a phenomenal book' JON STEWART 'Offers a window onto Russia's wartime soul' ECONOMIST 'An intimate, unrestrained account … In between his jail-cell tales, he weaves in the story of modern Russia' THE TELEGRAPH ‘A prison memoir that doubles as a love letter, not to the dictatorship that imprisoned him, but to the Russia underneath: its language, landscape, literature, and people’ ANTHONY DOERR The revelatory, much-anticipated memoir from the Wall Street Journal reporter who was wrongly imprisoned in Putin’s Russia – a glimpse inside the perils and contradictions of a country ruled by autocracy. In March 2023, a year after Russia invaded Ukraine, Evan Gershkovich, a young reporter for the Wall Street Journal, sat down with a source in an empty restaurant 900 miles east of Moscow. Within moments, a squad of masked FSB agents charged in, blindfolded Evan, and dragged him into an unmarked van. Evan had become the first western journalist since the Cold War arrested by Russia on espionage charges. He became an innocent pawn in a geopolitical chess match played at the very highest levels of global power. Evan had loved his life in Moscow. Born to Soviet émigré parents who left the USSR in the 1970s, eventually settling in New Jersey, Evan was raised speaking Russian at home and watching Soviet-era cartoons. As a young journalist in Russia, Evan dove into life – unpacking politics for readers of The Moscow Times and developing a circle of deep friendships with Russian peers, all striving to make their way in perilous times. "He reconnected with his Russian heritage and became obsessed with understanding the complexities of Russia's culture and people"? Then, suddenly, his world shrank to a…