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Russia Starts Here

Howard Amos
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A01=Howard Amos
Author_Howard Amos
Category=JBCC
Category=NHTB
Category=NHTD
Conflict
democracy
Eastern Europe
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Europe
forthcoming
History
post-Soviet Russia
Russia
Soviet Union
Travel
Vladimir Putin
War
World War II

Product details

  • ISBN 9781472991331
  • Dimensions: 129 x 198mm
  • Publication Date: 30 Jul 2026
  • Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
  • Publication City/Country: GB
  • Product Form: Paperback
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Description

SHORTLISTED FOR THE PUSHKIN HOUSE PRIZE 2025
SHORTLISTED FOR THE SALTIRES DEBUT NON-FICTION PRIZE 2025
SHORTLISTED FOR THE SHERBORNE PRIZE FOR TRAVEL WRITING 2026

'A different level of insight to anything I’ve read for a long time about Russia.' - Sophy Roberts, author of The Lost Pianos of Siberia

'Exquisitely observed.. Full of empathy, Amos refuses easy stereotypes.' - Tom Parfitt, author of High Caucasus

Returning to an overlooked region on the edge of Russia, Howard Amos sets out on a quest to understand the country he once called home.

On Russia’s European borderlands, people live their lives among the ruins of successive empires. Pskov, an old Slavic land of forgotten stories and faded waysides, has weathered the tides of history. Once a thriving nexus of trade and cultural exchange, today it is one of the poorest and most rapidly depopulating places of this vast nation. To understand the darkness that has captured Russia, Howard Amos journeys through a landscape of small towns, re-wilding fields and dilapidated churches.

This is a lyrical portrait of Russia where it meets NATO and the EU – a place of frontiers and boundaries that reveals unfamiliar and uncomfortable truths. In a country where history has been erased, manipulated and marginalised, the voices Howard Amos spotlights are a powerful antidote against forgetting.

From the last inhabitants of a dying village to the long-term residents of a psychiatric hospital and a museum curator fighting local opposition to chronicle Pskov’s forgotten Jewish heritage, Howard Amos uncovers compelling stories that are shaped by violence, tragedy and loss. He also encounters some of the powerful men who have loomed over Pskov leaving a troubling legacy in their wake, from far-right politicians to Putin's personal priest.
About Howard Amos
Howard Amos is a writer and journalist, who has been published by outlets including The Guardian, Newsweek, Foreign Policy, The Associated Press and The New Republic. Raised in London, he spent a year living in Russia’s Pskov Region before working for almost a decade as a correspondent in Moscow. He left Russia in the days after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and, based out of Armenia, did a year-long stint as editor-in-chief of The Moscow Times in exile. He now lives in Edinburgh.

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