I read this some years ago, and it had a massive impact on me in terms of my thinking about Europe and the differences between the West - of clear boundaries and settled nations (even those that have been invented) compared to the fluid identities of central Europe, where language, ethnicity, religion all mix up and provide no clear boundaries. It was written just after the collapse of communism and Anne Applebaum was still able to find and talk to people who remember the days of the Habsburgs or Tsarist rule. Adam Mickiewicz appealed to me too - a nationalist poet claimed by three nations, a polish hero whose most famous work refers to his fatherland as Lithuania and who grew up in what is now Belarus and wrote much of his work while living in what is now Ukraine. It was still fresh to read and i enjoyed it just as much, although I was a bit worried it wouldn't hold up as Anne Applebaum seems to be quite a Tory these days and writes for The Spectator. I'd love to travel in this region, or at least those parts now in the EU that would be relatively safe. Belarus and Kaliningrad ain't gonna happen in the near future.
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