The Oak and The Larch: A Forest History of Russia and its Empires

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The Oak and The Larch: A Forest History of Russia and its Empires Author: Format: Hardback First Published: Published By: HarperCollins Publishers
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Pages: 288 Language: English ISBN: 9780008554941 Categories: ,

Russia has more trees than there are stars in our galaxy, and the forest lies at the heart of this vast nation’s history and culture. The Oak and the Larch tells the story of the northern Eurasian forests which have, over the centuries, been part of the territories of Chinggis Khan’s Golden Horde, the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union and now the Russian Federation, Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, and Mongolia. Ranging from the medieval era to the present, Pinkham draws on literature – from indigenous legends to canonical works by Tolstoy and Turgenev – as well as political history, art, music, and original reportage. As she traces the forest’s role as a wellspring of national identity, a place of shelter, conflict and survival against the odds, Pinkham also shows the threats facing the forests – and what we stand to lose when nature is depleted.

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PRAISE FOR BLACK SQUARE: 'Black Square is as elegant, suggestive, ominous, beautiful, and deceptively simple as, well, a black square. Perhaps the only thing more impressive than the sheer number and diversity of people Sophie Pinkham has spoken to is how deftly she has woven their stories into a single compulsively readable narrative. – Elif Batuman, author of 'The Possessed' An empathetic and deeply humanising look at troubled times and dangerous, revolutionary days. – Peter Pomerantsev, author of 'Nothing is True and Everything is Possible' The first few chapters are a scrapbook, lively and engaging but coloured by the innocence of a soft-fleshed outsider in a weird and bone-hard world. The characters swim up, vivid and yet surreal. ― Financial Times Essential reading for anyone who cares about Ukraine, anyone who’s wondering if they should care about Ukraine, and anyone who happens to like nonfiction narratives told in a human voice’. ― Open Democracy

Author Biography

Sophie Pinkham is a writer specialising in Soviet and post-Soviet culture, history and politics. She is Professor of Practice in the Comparative Literature Department at Cornell University. Her story for the Economist 1843, ‘Lost in a Dark Wood’, on migrants in the forest on the Belarusian-Polish border, was awarded a 2023 British Journalism Award. Her writing has appeared in The New York Review of Books, New York Times, Guardian, New Yorker, Foreign Affairs, London Review of Books, Foreign Policy, Archaeology, and The Paris Review, among other places. Her first book, Black Square: Adventures in Post-Soviet Ukraine, was published in 2016.

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