This Cursed Beautiful Land

The revelatory, much-anticipated memoir from the Wall Street Journal reporter who was wrongly imprisoned in Putin's Russia - a glimpse inside the perils and contradictions of a country ruled by autocracy. In March 2023, a year after Russia invaded Ukraine, Evan Gershkovich, a young reporter for the Wall Street Journal, sat down with a source in an empty restaurant 900 miles east of Moscow. Within moments, a squad of masked FSB agents charged in, blindfolded Evan, and dragged him into an unmarked van. Evan had become the first western journalist since the Cold War arrested by Russia on espionage charges. He became an innocent pawn in a geopolitical chess match played at the very highest levels of global power. Evan had loved his life in Moscow. Born to Russian émigré parents who had left the Soviet Union in the 1970s for a life in New Jersey, Evan was raised eating Russian food, speaking Russian at home and consuming Soviet-era cartoons. As a young journalist in Russia, 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. "He reconnected with his Russian heritage and became obsessed with understanding the complexities of Russia's culture and people"? Then, suddenly, his world shrank to a tiny, cement-walled cell in Lefortovo prison. And there, Evan Gershkovich did something remarkable: he continued reporting. For the next sixteen months, he documented a life in Russia that few Westerners will ever experience: its sprawling prison system, with its own vocabulary, customs and Soviet heritage still alive today. Also, its surprising pockets of humanity. And he did so with the eye of a journalist, the soul of a storyteller. 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 also an extraordinary, deeply reported chronicle of a misunderstood people, their land, history and culture.

Evan 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.