dan_h72 's review for:

The Border: A Journey Around Russia Through North Korea, China, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Norway, and the Northeast Passage by Erika Fatland

4.5

adventurous informative medium-paced

---

In The Border, Fatland travels over twenty-thousand kilometres across fourteen countries and three breakaway republics. This book has drawn unfavourable comparisons to Sovietstan, but she is undertaking a different, and much more daunting task. There cannot be the same expectation of a consistent, unifying theme as there was in Fatland’s breakout work. The diversity of histories and experiences is simply too broad. 

This book provides Fatland’s signature combination of both breadth and depth. She will provide you with snapshots of life from North Korea to Norway — two countries that could not be more different — and while they are only snapshots of large, diverse cultures, they will be poignant and human. When the reader reaches the end of the nearly 600-page book, they will have to draw their own conclusions about the nature of Russia’s relationships with its neighbours.