Stalin's Nose: Across the Face of Europe

by Rory MacLean

Book Overview

This surreal and darkly comic tale is based on the author's journey from Berlin to Moscow, through Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland and Romania, only weeks after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1845116232
• ISBN13: 9781845116231
• Release Date: May 2008
• Publisher: I. B. Tauris & Company
• Length: 211 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.3" x 7.7"

Customer Reviews

A porcine, an aunt and an Englishman review history

An Englishman takes a whirlwind tour of Central Europe with his formerly-Communist German aunt and her pig, Winston. The porcine was responsible for the demise of the aunt's husband, by falling out of a tree whilst the poor gent (himself a former Communist, and responsible for many reprehensible historical acts, including involvement in the ordering of shooting of East Berliners trying to jump the concertina wire barrier, before partaking in the decision of building a wall to prevent more such escapes -- so, maybe not such a poor gent). Whilst they investigate in Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland they are joined by the aunt's sister, a fervent anti-Communist, who does not pass up any opportunity to berate, attack, and argue with her sister, all while they are driving the second sister's dead husband to a proper burial place (the casket is transported on top of a car, and at times taken off whilst they stay overnight in one or another place -- one of those leading to the casket being "lost" and needing to be found and reclaimed). In turn hilarious and poignant, it often also makes the senses come up short and blanch at the cruelty and violence of Europeans in the recent past: Nazi atrocities were not just the wiping out of Jewish populations, but retributions in the scale of 100 to 1 for every German soldier killed by resisters; there was also collaboration with the Nazis to wipe out Jews; and, not the least, Communists allowing peoples to be decimated by Nazis, as well as doing their own mass killing. In the end, this is a masterful book. It is not the "charming delight" in the quote of John Le Carrè on the front cover. It is a work of art, a reminiscence and an acceptance of shared responsibility for the killings of so many, of the passive if not the active collaboration with the Germans who most decidedly actively killed millions, of the aggressive imperialism and horribly efficient cruelty of the Russian Communists. Written in poetic lyricism, in beautiful English, it is a stunning book.