The Fault Line

January 19, 2015
In this hypnotic travelogue, Italian journalist Rumiz weaves a poetic narrative about his 2008 journey along the length of the former Iron Curtain, moving vertically through eastern Europe where the European Union meets its non-member neighbors, from the Arctic Circle to the Mediterranean, and from Murmansk to Istanbul. Determined, at the age of 60, to go by foot and public transportation, travelling light and enjoying as many encounters and adventures as possible, he and his photographer companion rely the kindness of strangers as they venture far in search of the unknown Europe. There’s an unlikely poetic beauty to his flowery, indulgent prose, in which every moment takes on transcendent meaning. “I get off into a stiff wind impregnated with the melancholy of a Welsh coal mine,” he writes from a town in northeastern Norway. He lovingly describes his escapades and experiences, conjuring up places few tourists ever visit, exposing the dichotomy between the modernity of the EU and the time-lost ways of the old world, and illuminating a much-overlooked region of the world in a thoroughly fascinating manner. Though he’s given to purple prose and overly colorful descriptions, there’s no denying the allure and appeal of his European odyssey.

January 1, 2015
An award-winning Italian journalist chronicles his travels along Europe's eastern frontier.In his first book translated into English, La Repubblica correspondent Rumiz vents his anger at the European Union's "rhetoric of globalization," which homogenizes ethnic distinctions and threatens to obliterate traditional communities. His nostalgic, engaging search for the heart of European identity takes him from the Arctic to the Mediterranean, through present-day Finland, Latvia, Ukraine and Poland. "On my do-it-yourself map," he writes, "there are no nation-states, only historic border regions that have been swallowed up by geopolitics." In these regions, the author finds depopulated villages, survivors of mass deportations and exterminations that continued long after World War II. He notes that 9 million Poles and Ukrainians changed countries between 1945 and 1956. Latvia and northern Poland are "a land of ghosts and the uprooted." In Belarus, Rumiz found only 10 Jews still living where once there was a thriving community. "Not only have they disappeared, but also the Poles, the Lithuanians, the Germans, the Ukrainians, and the Armenians," the result of ethnic cleansing. History has left the region bereft, and the lure of the West fuels ongoing emigration, especially of young people. In Warsaw, Rumiz viewed ample evidence that the city has been "sucked into the void" of the "analgesic illusionism of the West." He hurls severe condemnation at Italy, where, he asserts, TV and mobile phones have made people illiterate; where supermarkets with genetically modified foods have replaced local shops; and especially where cultural amnesia has revised history. Unlike Germany, "Italy continues to pretend that it was not Fascist and that it won the war." Exploring the border between Russia and the European Union, Rumiz realized that he was traveling "a seismic fault that's only apparently dormant" because Russia, under Putin, is becoming a renewed threat. A richly detailed journey into Europe's dark past and vulnerable present.

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February 15, 2015

Former war correspondent Rumiz (Italy's La Repubblica) and author of numerous travel books written in his native Italian chronicles his 2008 journey on the EU's frontier. He travels from the frozen Hyperborean lands to the Mediterranean, along much of the eastern front of World War I. As the title suggests, this frontier is shaky ground, with ethnic and political conflict, and the legacy of lost, displaced, and uprooted people. A 60-year veteran traveler, Rumiz set off, with minimal baggage, a photographer friend, and his notebooks, taking trains, buses, and cars through the historic border regions, areas where the true "Mitteleuropa" exists despite shifting map lines. The mingling of empires and peoples is found in Latvia, where Russians were caught by moving borders and hold alien passports, Jewish synagogues sit abandoned, and the Latvian identity is still expressed in singing. Kaliningrad markets offer Cossack honey and badger-fat folk remedies as well as ATMs dispensing rubles and dollars, and gangsters in stretch limos. A friend in Warsaw reminds the author that "difficulty equals story," and Rumiz finds stories all along the way. VERDICT A glimpse of a hard journey through hard times, highly recommended for those interested in European history and little-known corners of travel.--Melissa Stearns, Franklin Pierce Univ. Lib., Rindge, NH

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