Book Description
Picnic at the Iron
Curtain: From the Fall of the Berlin Wall to Ukraine’s Orange Revolution won
a 2013 Next Generation Indie Book Awards finalist’s award and was a 2012
Foreword’s Book of the Year Award finalist. It is an adventure filled memoir
based on my experiences as a journalist covering the collapse of communism in
Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. When I first went to Eastern Europe, as a
student in 1988, I never imagined that I would smuggle people across borders,
trade on the black market, or deliberately drive by car into a civil war. What
began with a bicycle accident in London shortly before the fall of the Berlin
Wall ended up in a decade long journey through countries breaking free from the
Soviet bloc, with a return visit to Kiev in 2004 to report on Ukraine’s Orange
revolution. That chapter provides context for understanding protests that began
in Ukraine in November 2103 over the President’s decision not to sign an
association agreement with the European Union.
I reported primarily for British news organizations, The
Guardian (in Hungary), The Independent (in Ukraine), and for BBC
World (in London and Ukraine). I also contributed to other media outlets,
including CBC radio and Newsweek magazine.