Between Germany and Russia is a region strewn with monuments to the horrors of war, genocide and disaster the bloodlands where the murderous regimes of Hitler and Stalin unleashed the violence that scarred the twentieth century and shaped so much of the world we know today. In September 2016 the German-Iranian writer Navid Kermani set out to discover this land and to travel along the trenches that are now re-emerging in Europe, from his home in Cologne through eastern Germany to the Baltics, and from there south to the Caucasus and to Isfahan in Iran, the home of his parents.

This beautifully written travel diary, enlivened by conversations with the people Kermani meets along the way, brings to life the tragic history of these troubled lands and shows how this history leaves its traces in the present. It will be of great interest to anyone concerned with current affairs and with the events that have shaped, and continue to shape, the world in which we live today.

Navid Kermani is a writer and scholar who lives in Cologne, Germany. He has received numerous accolades for his literary and academic work, including the 2015 Peace Prize of the German Publishers Association, Germanys most prestigious cultural award.

Contents Cologne First Day: Schwerin Second Day: From Berlin to Wroc aw Third Day: Auschwitz Fourth Day: Cracow Fifth Day: From Cracow to Warsaw Sixth Day: Warsaw Seventh Day: Warsaw Eighth Day: From Warsaw to Masuria Ninth Day: Kaunas Tenth Day: Vilnius and Vicinity Eleventh Day: Via Paneriai to Minsk Twelfth Day: Minsk and Khatyn Thirteenth Day: Into the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone Fourteenth Day: Kurapaty and Minsk Fifteenth Day: Into the Exclusion Zone East of Krasnapolle Sixteenth Day: From Minsk to Kiev Seventeenth Day: Kiev Eighteenth Day: From Kiev to Dnipro Nineteenth Day: To the Front in Donbas Twentieth Day: Via Mariupol to the Black Sea Twenty-first Day: Along the Black Sea to Odessa Twenty-second Day: Odessa Twenty-third Day: Leaving Odessa by Air Twenty-fourth Day: Via Moscow to Simferopol Twenty-fifth Day: Via Bakhtshyssarai to Sevastopol Twenty-sixth Day: Along the Crimean Coast Twenty-seventh Day: From Crimea to the Russian Mainland Twenty-eighth Day: To Krasnodar Twenty-ninth Day: From Krasnodar to Grozny Thirtieth Day: Grozny Thirty-first Day: In the Chechen Mountains Thirty-second Day: From Grozny to Tbilisi Thirty-third Day: Tbilisi Thirty-fourth Day: Tbilisi Thirty-fifth Day: To Gori and the Georgian-Ossetian Cease-fire Line Thirty-sixth Day: From Tbilisi to Kakheti Thirty-seventh Day: From Kakheti to Azerbaijan Thirty-eighth Day: Along the Azeri-Armenian Cease-fire Line Thirty-ninth Day: By Night Train to Baku Fortieth Day: Baku Forty-first Day: Baku and Qobustan Forty-second Day: Leaving Baku by Air Forty-third Day: Yerevan Forty-fourth Day: Yerevan Forty-fifth Day: To Lake Sevan and On to Nagorno-Karabakh Forty-sixth Day: Through Nagorno-Karabakh Forty-seventh Day: To the Armenian-Azeri Cease-fire Line and On to Iran Forty-eighth Day: Via Jolfa to Tabriz Forty-ninth Day: Via Ahmadabad to Alamut Castle Fiftieth Day: To the Caspian Sea and On to Tehran Fifty-first Day: Tehran Fifty-second Day: Tehran Fifty-third Day: Tehran Fifty-fourth Day: Flying Out of Tehran With Family in Isfahan The Journey Begins Acknowledgements Bibliography