![]() Here I share 10 books that reveal the essence of the most menacing border the world has yet seen. It is one of the pleasures of solo travel. It is my attempt to capture what survives of the old divide both on the ground and in people’s heads. The result was the trip of a lifetime and a book, The Curtain and the Wall: A Modern Journey along Europe’s Cold War Border. Just before the pandemic, I travelled the length of the iron curtain, from the Arctic where Norway and Russia meet to the frontier of Turkey and Azerbaijan, the most southerly place where Nato touched the Warsaw Pact countries. ![]() From tense cold war thrillers to passionately argued treatises blaming one side or the other for the stalemate, from historians trying to make sense of how Europe became so riven to memoirists committing their own, often tragic tales to print: the iron curtain has been the source of some amazing books. I also discovered early how the iron curtain had inspired writers. I visited eastern Europe from 1995 onwards and found countries reeling from the end of its version of socialism. I started learning Russian the following year and my textbooks came from the Soviet era. Ever since, the divide has been a ghost in my mind. ![]() I remember watching news of the Berlin Wall falling. ![]() ![]() I was just 11 when the iron curtain collapsed. ![]()
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