Black Earth

‘Will someone pay for the spilled blood?’ No. Nobody.’ So wrote Mikhail Bulgakov in Kiev during the turmoil of the Russian Civil War.

Since then the borders of Ukraine have shifted constantly and its people have suffered numerous foreign interventions. The Ukrainian state we know today has existed only since 1991 and what went before remains contested and controversial, both among its people and its neighbours.

In simple and vivid prose, Jens Mühling narrates his encounters with nationalists and old communists, Crimean Tatars and Cossacks, smugglers, archeologists, and soldiers all of whose views on nationhood and the past could hardly be more different. Black Earth connects all these stories to provide an unconventional and unfiltered view of Ukraine – a country at the crossroads of Europe and Asia and at the centre of the world’s attention.