Black Earth : A Journey through Ukraine

Writing in a simple and vivid way, Jens Mühling narrates his encounters with nationalists and old Communists, Crimean Tatars and Cossacks, smugglers, archaeologists and soldiers, all of whose views could hardly be more different. Through these diverse voices, he explores a country whose borders have shifted constantly and whose people have suffered numerous military foreign interventions.

'Will someone pay for the spilled blood? No. Nobody.' Mikhail Bulgakov wrote these words in Kiev during the turmoil of the Russian Civil War. Since then, Ukraine has endured countless upheavals, existing as an independent state only since 1991. What it was before remains controversial among its people as well as its European neighbours.

Black Earth connects all these stories to convey an unconventional and unfiltered view of Ukraine - a country at the crossroads of Europe and Asia and the centre of countless conflicts of opinion.