Glass Wall - Paperback

by Max Egremont (Author)

Biographer and historian Max Egremont, author of Some Desperate Glory, tells stories from the "Glass Wall" between Europe and Asia in this riveting historical account.

Few countries have suffered more from the convulsions and bloodshed of twentieth-century Europe than those in the eastern Baltic region. Caught between the giants of Germany and Russia, on a route across which armies surged or retreated, small nations like Latvia and Estonia were for centuries the subjects of conquests and domination as foreign colonizers claimed control of the territory and its inhabitants, along with their religion, government, and culture.

The Glass Wall features an extraordinary cast of characters--contemporary and historical, foreign and indigenous--who have lived and fought in the Baltic, western Europe's easternmost stronghold. Too often the destiny of this region has seemed to be to serve as the front line in other people's wars. By telling the stories of warriors and victims, of philosophers and barons, of poets and artists, of rebels and emperors, and of others who lived through years of turmoil and violence, Max Egremont sets forth a brilliant account of a long-overlooked region, on a frontier whose limits may still be in doubt.

Author Biography

Max Egremont was born in 1948 and studied modern history at Oxford University. He is the author of a number of novels and several works of history and biography, including Forgotten Land: Journeys Among the Ghosts of East Prussia, Some Desperate Glory: The First World War the Poets Knew, and an acclaimed biography of Siegfried Sassoon.