About the Author

Erika Fatland studied Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo. Her 2011 book, The Village of Angels, was an in situ report on the Beslan terror attacks of 2004 and she is also the author of The Year Without Summer, describing the harrowing year that followed the massacre on Utøya in 2011. For Sovietistan (2019) she was shortlisted for the Edward Stanford/Lonely Planet Debut Travel Writer of the Year, and The Border (2020) was shortlisted for the Stanfords Dolman Travel Book of the Year 2020. Both are available from Pegasus Books. She speaks eight languages and lives in Oslo with her husband.

Kari Dickson is a translator from Norwegian of crime fiction, literary fiction, children's books, theatre, and non-fiction, including Erika Fatland's Sovietistan and The Border. She is also an occasional tutor in Norwegian language, literature, and translation at the University of Edinburgh.

Reviews

Praise for Erika Fatland's Sovietistan "An introduction to a deeply misunderstood part of the world...the complexity and beauty of this region are best represented when she goes back in time. Fatland has a level of access most outsiders would never have."--Gina Rae La Cerva "The New York Times Book Review"

"Fatland's anecdotes are rich and revelatory... Sovietistan blends complex history with Fatland's own clear-eyed reporting, the devastation of the Soviet era always in the background (and sometimes the foreground). With the Russian Bear once again on the move, she plumbs the high cost of dictatorships and the human yearning for self-determination. Sovietistan is a perspicacious, vital book about little-known places and real lives; it deserves a wide readership." --The Minneapolis Star Tribune

"In this absorbing travelogue, Erika Fatland picks her way through five former Soviet satellite states, witnessing the social, economic, and environmental damage they've sustained." -- "Christian Science Monitor"

"Vivid. In addition to taking the reader on a fascinating journey, Sovietistan highlights what an ethnic mosaic the region is. What is so refreshing about Fatland is her predilection for deliberate moments of bathos and deconstruction. An opportunity for sustained reflection on the region."--PopMatters