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This Cursed Beautiful Land: A Russian-American Story
The revelatory, much-anticipated memoir from the Wall Street Journal reporter who was wrongly imprisoned in Putin’s Russia for more than a year—a glimpse inside the perils and contradictions of a country in the midst of autocracy
In March 2023, a year after Russia invaded Ukraine, Evan Gershkovich met with a union boss connected with a Russian tank factory. As the journalist sat with his source in an empty restaurant in an industrial city 900 miles east of Moscow, a squad of masked agents charged in, blindfolded Evan, and dragged him into an unmarked van. The agents were from the FSB, Putin’s powerful security service, and the successor to the Soviet-era KGB.
Five years earlier, Evan had arrived in Moscow to jumpstart his journalism career. His parents had left the Soviet Union in the 1970s, forging a middle-class life in New Jersey, where Evan grew up on Soviet-era cartoons and weekend trips to Brighton Beach. In Moscow, Evan dove into life—unpacking politics for readers of The Moscow Times and developing a circle of deep friendships with Russian peers, all striving to make their way in perilous times.
Western journalists had long felt insulated from the dangers their Russian counterparts experienced. But war, it seemed, had changed the rules. Interrogated for hours after his arrest, Evan was told he was being charged with spying and thrown in Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo prison—a pawn in a geopolitical chess match.
After his world suddenly shrunk to a tiny, cement-walled cell, Evan did something he continued reporting. For the next sixteen months, he documented a life in Russia that few Westerners will ever its sprawling prison system, with its own vocabulary and customs—and surprising pockets of humanity.
In writing by turns riveting and humorous, Evan brings readers inside the events leading to his arrest, his nearly 500 days in Russian prisons, and the blockbuster, multi-country prisoner swap that freed him. More than a prison memoir, This Cursed Beautiful Land is an extraordinary, deeply reported chronicle of a misunderstood people and their land—marked at once by stunning beauty and a haunting history.
In March 2023, a year after Russia invaded Ukraine, Evan Gershkovich met with a union boss connected with a Russian tank factory. As the journalist sat with his source in an empty restaurant in an industrial city 900 miles east of Moscow, a squad of masked agents charged in, blindfolded Evan, and dragged him into an unmarked van. The agents were from the FSB, Putin’s powerful security service, and the successor to the Soviet-era KGB.
Five years earlier, Evan had arrived in Moscow to jumpstart his journalism career. His parents had left the Soviet Union in the 1970s, forging a middle-class life in New Jersey, where Evan grew up on Soviet-era cartoons and weekend trips to Brighton Beach. In Moscow, Evan dove into life—unpacking politics for readers of The Moscow Times and developing a circle of deep friendships with Russian peers, all striving to make their way in perilous times.
Western journalists had long felt insulated from the dangers their Russian counterparts experienced. But war, it seemed, had changed the rules. Interrogated for hours after his arrest, Evan was told he was being charged with spying and thrown in Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo prison—a pawn in a geopolitical chess match.
After his world suddenly shrunk to a tiny, cement-walled cell, Evan did something he continued reporting. For the next sixteen months, he documented a life in Russia that few Westerners will ever its sprawling prison system, with its own vocabulary and customs—and surprising pockets of humanity.
In writing by turns riveting and humorous, Evan brings readers inside the events leading to his arrest, his nearly 500 days in Russian prisons, and the blockbuster, multi-country prisoner swap that freed him. More than a prison memoir, This Cursed Beautiful Land is an extraordinary, deeply reported chronicle of a misunderstood people and their land—marked at once by stunning beauty and a haunting history.
432 pages, Hardcover
Published September 29, 2026
About the author
Evan Gershkovich
2 books32 followersEvan Gershkovich is a foreign correspondent for The Wall Street Journal based in Berlin. Born in New Jersey to Soviet émigrés, he lived in Russia for over five years before his 2023 arrest and subsequent sixteen-month imprisonment on false espionage charges. His writing has also appeared in The New York Times, The Economist and Foreign Policy, and he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2025 as part of an investigative team for The Journal. He is the recipient of a MacDowell Fellowship.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
What happens, depending on interpretations, when the lines between journalism and espionage blur? Drawn into this vortex, with spellbinding lucidity, Russian American journalist Evan Gershkovich exposes the bewildering paradox of Russia: beautiful, cursed, and completely misunderstood by the West. I haven't read anything as moving or close to the troubled Russian soul since Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. With almost no accurate information emerging on contemporary conditions, this is a crucial work to understand what it is like in Putin's regime.
October 2, 2026
Compelling account of both the lead up and course of Evan Gershkovich’s imprisonment in Russia. Deftly weaves his personal narrative with broader themes and insights into the mindset of Russia and Russians. Most compelling is his first hand accounting of the various regime functionaries whom he encountered during his time in custody. Reminiscent of Solzhenitsyn and The Gulag Archipelago, but with the constant reminder that Gershkovich’s treatment as an American bargaining chip is much less harsh than the average Russian prisoner. He clearly understands that though, which means the book is appropriately respectful of his status versus those of his fellow prisoners.
Highly recommended.
Highly recommended.
October 1, 2026
Listened to the audiobook. Narration was ok. A bit monotone and without emotion. This book was long …and I felt that while reading it. There were parts I was not overly interested in but overall it was a good book.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews