A Norwegian journalist travels through Central Asia, exploring the varying legacy of Soviet rule in a region rich in ancient history, culture, and landscapes unlike anywhere else in the world.
Fatland’s anecdotes are rich and revelatory ... Sovietistan blends complex history with Fatland’s own clear-eyed reporting, the devastation of the Soviet era always in the background (and sometimes the foreground). With the Russian Bear once again on the move, she plumbs the high cost of dictatorships and the human yearning for self-determination. Sovietistan is a perspicacious, vital book about little-known places and real lives; it deserves a wide readership.
All credit...to Norwegian social anthropologist and author Erika Fatland, who may have titled her central Asian travelogue Sovietistan, but who treats each of this clumsily named collective with care and attention. Part travel diary, part sociopolitical analysis, Sovietistan seeks to keep in mind the region’s ancient history—dictated to Fatland with metronomic accuracy by identikit tour guides in the various city museums—while probing what may lie ahead ... Fatland’s eye for the distinct nature of these countries—seamlessly conveyed in Kari Dickson’s translation—is critical.
Her best reporting is about Turkmenistan, a country largely closed to independent travellers and which she presents in a refreshing three-dimensional way ... Another highlight is her description of the world’s largest walnut grove, in Kyrgyzstan ... This oasis of authenticity is a welcome contrast to the phoney falconry she caustically depicts a few pages earlier, with bored golden eagles inflicting gory deaths on terrified captive animals. But there is a lot of padding. The reader ploughs through potted histories ranging from Genghis Khan to British imperial anxieties in India. Fatland’s pen nib all too often turns to lead ... The biggest problem is Fatland’s own presence on her pages, which is intrusive and unhelpful.
