The trouble with loving Russia: Evan Gershkovich's memoir seeks sentimentality in a lost country

The Kyiv Independent · 24.10.2026, 08:03:16

By the end of his pre-trial detention at Moscow's infamous Lefortovo Prison, American journalist Evan Gershkovich had developed a curious rapport with the FSB investigator tasked with proving he was a spy. "Most people break after four months or so, but you're still holding strong — a year in," the investigator told him, and the two raised their cigarettes in a toast to "having tried to find common ground." Gershkovich writes about many such moments in "This Cursed Beautiful Land: A Russian-Am