The Glass Wall: Lives on the Baltic Frontier

Historian and novelist Egremont (Some Desperate Glory) delivers a lyrical if scattershot portrait of the Baltic nations of Estonia and Latvia. Visiting towns, estates, churches, and castles “made, destroyed and remade over centuries,” he describes a history of conquest and subjugation from the Crusades in the Middle Ages up through the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. Highlighting the region’s long history of being dominated by outsiders, Egremont profiles George Armistead, the Latvian-born son of a British merchant family who became mayor of Riga in 1901, and delves into the love affairs of European aristocrats in the Baltic countryside, noting that the novel The Leopard was inspired by author Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s relationship with his Latvian German wife, Alexandra von Wolff. Unfortunately, Egremont doesn’t shed much light on current tensions between the Baltic countries and neighboring Russia, and his interviews with elderly locals fail to clarify if they’re better off today (when “money rules now instead of occupiers”) than they were under the Germans or the Soviets. Those looking for insights into contemporary Baltic life and the region’s future will be disappointed. Despite Egremont’s evocative prose and deep knowledge of the region, this travelogue is stuck in the past. (Feb.)