Other editions of book Stalin's Nose: Across the Face of Europe

In Rory MacLean’s ground breaking debut, Winston the pig drops onto uncle Peter’s head and kills him dead. It is a distressing end to a distinguished Soviet spy. After the funeral aunt Zita, a faded Austrian aristocrat and a vivacious eccentric, refuses to remain at home in East Germany. Instead she hijacks her nephew and, with Winston in tow, sets out on one last ride. The Berlin Wall fell only weeks before and Zita is determined to reach across the reopened borders and rediscover her remarkable east European family.In a rattling Trabant the unlikely trio puff and wheeze across the changing continent, following the threads of memory. Zita’s relations — the angel of Prague, the Hungarian grave digger who buried Stalin’s nose, a dying Romanian propagandist — help tie together the loose ends of her life. The travellers picnic at Auschwitz. They meet Lenin’s embalmer. They carry a long-lost corpse over the Carpathian mountains. Everywhere they learn what life had truly been like under totalitarian rule. They hear a torrent of life tales, some heartbreaking, some hilarious, all enriched with the joy of telling after decades of enforced silence.Humorous and black, touched with the surreal and the farcical, Stalin’s Nose is an exhilarating ride from the Baltic to the Black Sea, between Berlin and Moscow, and a portrait of Europe like no other. About the AuthorRory MacLean is one of Britain’s most expressive and adventurous travel writers. His ten books, including UK best-sellers ‘Stalin’s Nose’ and ‘Under the Dragon’, have challenged and invigorated creative non-fiction writing, and – according to the late John Fowles – are among works that ‘marvellously explain why literature still lives’. He has won awards from the Canada Council and the Arts Council of England as well as a Winston Churchill Travelling Fellowship, and was nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary prize. He has worked on movies with Marlene Dietrich and David Bowie, and written and presented over 50 BBC radio programmes. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Rory divides his time between London and Berlin.

In Rory MacLean's groundbreaking debut travel book, Winston the pig drops on to Uncle Peter's head and kills him dead. Unwilling to be left alone in her house Aunt Zita, a faded Austrian aristocrat and a vivacious eccentric, hijacks her nephew and, together with Winston, sets out on one last ride. The Berlin Wall has fallen only weeks before and Zita is determined to reach across the reopened borders and rediscover her remarkable east European family. In a rattling Trabant the unlikely trio puff and wheeze across the changing continent, following the threads of memory. Zita's relations - the angel of Prague, the Hungarian grave digger who buried Stalin's nose, a dying Romanian propagandist - help tie together the loose ends of her life. They picnic at Auschwitz. They meet Lenin's embalmer. They carry a long-lost corpse over the Carpathian mountains. Through war and revolution, decay and regeneration, "Stalin's Noseis" a surreal and darkly comic ride and a portrait of Europe like no other.

Rory MacLean's uncle was a Soviet spy, his aunt a faded Austrian aristocrat. They lived in furious, frustrated retirement in a rambling house filled with animals in Potsdam, Prussia's Versailles. In their youth they stole secrets from Stalin and changed history. He visited them briefly as he passed through Berlin en route from the Baltic to the Black Sea. He was travelling along the line of the old Iron Curtain, writing about the Eastern European revolutions. But his aunt, a vivacious eccentric, would not be left behind. In her rattling Trabant, accompanied by her pet pig, they moved across the continent, following the threads of memory. Her remarkable East European relations - the angel of Prague, a Hungarian grave digger, a dying Romanian propagandist - help tie together the loose ends of her life. They picknicked at Auschwitz, they met Lenin's embalmer and they visited an improverished Czech town. This book is a documentary of their journey and a history of Eastern Europe. Its portrayal of subjugated peoples at a time of great change, of their fears of the past and hopes for the future, illustrates the icy comedy of human existence.