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annabend's review
1.0
Putting this book down after trying many times to get into it. It's not what I wanted. The book is a mix of personal Soviet-era Western anecdotes and a kaleidoscopic journey through thousands of years of history of a large region. I found it quite disorienting. I wanted to get a good primer on the history of the Black Sea region, but this isn't that. Rather, it is a complex, subjective collection of essays that draws on various historical instances to colour in the character of a place. From what I managed to read Ascherson does this fairly well, if a little in an outdated way, but this is not a book for someone who is unfamiliar with the history and politics of Black Sea people. Even though I grew up in the region and have studied it in university, I had a hard time keeping up. Ascherson jumps through many time periods, sometimes several times within one paragraph, and unless you have internalized a timeline from 850 BCE to 2014 you are going to have trouble, too. This is a book for someone who knows a lot about the region already, who has studied the history extensively or who is well-versed in the current politics informing the countries around the Black Sea. For this person, Ascherson may reveal an interesting new perspective or argument one could engage in. A simple layperson will be left behind.
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