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About this book
Russia has more trees than there are stars in our galaxy, and the forest lies at the heart of this vast nation's history and culture.
The Oak and the Larch tells the story of the northern Eurasian forests, which have, over the centuries, been part of the territories of Chinggis Khan's Golden Horde, the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union and now the Russian Federation, Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, and Mongolia. Ranging from the medieval era to the present, Pinkham draws on literature – from indigenous legends to canonical works by Tolstoy and Turgenev – as well as political history, art, music, and original reportage. As she traces the forest's role as a wellspring of national identity, a place of shelter, conflict and survival against the odds, Pinkham also shows the threats facing the forests – and what we stand to lose when nature is depleted.
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Biography
Sophie Pinkham is a writer specialising in Soviet and post-Soviet culture, history and politics. She is Professor of Practice in the Comparative Literature Department at Cornell University. Her story for The Economist 1843, 'Lost in a Dark Wood', on migrants in the forest on the Belarusian-Polish border, was awarded a 2023 British Journalism Award. Her writing has appeared in The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, The Guardian, The New Yorker, Foreign Affairs, the London Review of Books, Foreign Policy, Archaeology, and The Paris Review, among other places. Her first book, Black Square: Adventures in Post-Soviet Ukraine, was published in 2016.
New
By: Sophie Pinkham(Author)
286 pages, b/w photos, b/w maps
"Strikingly original [...] a clever way to retell Russian history from a new and revealing perspective"
– The Times
"Fascinating [...] the book makes a compelling argument for the forest as a prism through which to understand Russia – including the former Soviet space – and its peoples"
– Guardian
"An expansive, often absorbing study of the role of the wilderness in the Russian imagination [...] Pinkham is at her sharpest when examining the Soviet era and its aftermath [...] There is some striking nature writing here – Pinkham’s reporting on self-taught wolf researchers who live in pristine isolation near the Russian-Finnish border is especially vivid"
– New York Times
"To tell Russia's story through its forests, from the ent-like leshy of medieval folklore to the way Ukraine's forests became bastions of defence against Putin's invasion, is a glorious act of imagination, and Sophie Pinkham's wonderful book is packed with insight to match"
– Mark Galeotti, author of A Short History of Russia
"For Sophie Pinkham, Russia’s forests contain everything: animals and spirits, legends and fairytales, seeds of the world’s greatest novels, whole histories of political repression and revolution, and hope for a radically post-national future. The Oak and the Larch is a towering achievement, a work of remarkable synthesis and sensitive storytelling"
– Merve Emre, author of The Personality Brokers
"Perceptive, wide-ranging, and gracefully written, The Oak and the Larch is a momentous chronicle of Russia’s vast and vital woodlands and their agency in a human history that touches us all. The lessons we follow from this sylvan past – and this book – will determine our future on Earth"
– Jack E. Davis, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Gulf
