No country embodied the turbulence of twentieth-century Europe more dramatically than East Prussia. The scene of Stalin's 'terrible revenge', it was carved up between Poland and the USSR after World War II - and passed abruptly into history. Many of its refugees are still alive and with astonishing stories to tell. Max Egremont's first travels to the old East Prussia took him to a post-communist desert. But at the turn of the twenty-first century he found a very different land: a Kaliningrad caught up in the materialism of Putin's Russia, and across the border, a nothern Poland that has become part of the European Union. He found himself on the borders of a new Europe. 'Forgotten Land' evokes an often beautiful landscape of ghosts, a region rich in culture and tradition, famously military, artistically fertile, haunted by tragedy and memories of greatness. Travelling to the birthplace of Kant, and going on to meet survivors from the great families of East Prussia, Max Egremont has written a personal and profoundly moving book: an account that combines atmosphere, history and travel in a resonant meditation on identity and the passing of time.
