Pravda Ha Ha

True Travels to the End of Europe

By: Rory MacLean

Narrated by: Rory MacLean

Bloomsbury presents Pravda Ha Ha written and read by Rory MacLean.

Shortlisted for the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year Award

'A gem of a book, informative, companionable, sometimes funny, and wholly original. MacLean must surely be the outstanding, and most indefatigable, traveller-writer of our time' John le Carré

In 1989 the Berlin Wall fell. In that euphoric year Rory MacLean travelled from Berlin to Moscow, exploring lands that were – for most Brits and Americans – part of the forgotten half of Europe. Thirty years on, MacLean traces his original journey backwards, across countries confronting old ghosts and new fears: from revanchist Russia, through Ukraine’s bloodlands, into illiberal Hungary, and then Poland, Germany and the UK. Along the way he shoulders an AK-47 to go hunting with Moscow's chicken Tsar, plays video games in St Petersburg with a cyber-hacker who cracked the US election, drops by the Che Guevara High School of Political Leadership in a non-existent nowhereland and meets the Warsaw doctor who tried to stop a march of 70,000 nationalists. Finally, on the shores of Lake Geneva, he waits patiently to chat with Mikhail Gorbachev.

As Europe sleepwalks into a perilous new age, MacLean explores how opportunists – both within and outside of Russia, from Putin to Home Counties populists – have made a joke of truth, exploiting refugees and the dispossessed, and examines the veracity of historical narrative from reportage to fiction and fake news. He asks what happened to the optimism of 1989 and, in the shadow of Brexit, chronicles the collapse of the European dream.

©2019 Rory MacLean (P)2019 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Compelling History in Style and Fun!

Written with style and humor, this book is fun to listen to and a fine lesson in history and contemporary issues. The author weaves interesting and pertinent stories and well researched history into his narrative in such a fluid way that the reader does not even realize how deep this is going until they’re there. All, while we travel with the author through Eastern Europe and beyond. One of the best travelogues I have ever listened to. And he’s a great narrator as well.

Narration style was distracting

Interesting anecdotes but rather narrowly focused. Seems biased to me but I did finish it.