Black Earth: A Journey through Ukraine

An in-depth exploration of Ukraine through encounters with the many different people who live there.

“Will someone pay for the spilled blood? No. Nobody.” Mikhail Bulgakov composed this ominous and prophetic phrase in Kiev amid the turmoil of the Russian civil war. Since then, Ukrainian borders have shifted constantly, and its people have suffered numerous military foreign interventions. Ukraine has only existed as an independent state since 1991, and what exactly it was before then is controversial among its people as well as its European neighbors.

In Black Earth: A Journey through the Ukraine, journalist and celebrated travel writer Jens Mühling takes readers across the country amid the ousting of former president Viktor Yanukovych and the Russian annexation of Crimea. Mühling delves deep into daily life in Ukraine, narrating his encounters with Ukrainian nationalists and old communists, Crimean Tatars and Cossacks, smugglers, and soldiers. 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 center of countless conflicts.

In this paperback edition, a new preface is included that takes into account recent developments up to the 2022 war between Russia and Ukraine.