Highlanders: A Journey to the Caucasus in Quest of Memory

by Yo'av Karny

Overview

The story of the region, told by an intrepid journalist

Many dire predictions followed the collapse of the Soviet Union, but nowhere have they materialized as dramatically as in the Caucasus: insurrection, civil wars, ethnic conflicts, economic disintegration, and up to two million refugees. Moreover, in the 1990s Russia twice went to war in the Caucasus, and suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of a nation so tiny that it could fit into a single district of Moscow.

What is it about the Caucasus that makes the region so restless, so unpredictable, so imbued with heroism but also with fanaticism and pain? In Highlanders, Yo'av Karny offers a better understanding of a region described as a "museum of civilizations," where breathtaking landscapes join with an astounding human diversity. Karny has spent many months among members of some of the smallest ethnic groups on earth, all of them living in the grim shadow of an unhappy empire. But his book is a journey not only to a geographic region but also to darker sides of the human soul, where courage vies with senseless vindictiveness; where honor and duty require people to share the present with long-dead ancestors, some real, some imaginary; and where an ancient way of life is drawing to an end under the combined weight of modernity and intolerance.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780374528126
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	12/05/2001
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	464
Sales rank:	1,157,336
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.04(d)

About the Author

Yo'av Karny, an Israeli foreign correspondent, has covered conflicts the world over for more than two decades in The Washington Post and The New York Times and on public television and radio.

Editorial Reviews

I doubt if any Westerner understands the political scenery of the post-Soviet Caucasus better than Karny, or has gathered and deployed his knowledge with such courage and sympathy.” —Colin Thubron, The New York Times Book Review

From the Publisher

I doubt if any Westerner understands the political scenery . . . better . . . and deployed his knowledge with such courage and sympathy.

Colin Thubron

The remote mountain region of the Caucasus has little in common with the contemporary West. Yet this history draws a compelling link between the Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev and a selection of national heroes ranging from William Wallace to William Tell and from Prometheus to Geronimo. They share, suggests Karny, "an astounding perseverance a dogged sense of pride irrational pursuits of liberty." These, he writes, are the characteristics of mountain-dwellers, whose attitude is shaped by altitude and whose chivalrous folklore has been co-opted by imperial plain-dwellers from Boston to London to Moscow. It is through this topographical lens that Karny presents the complex microcosm of the Caucasus. Here, in a region half the size of Kentucky, are registered 46 distinct nations, speaking an even greater number of languages. Among them are the Circassians, whose military prowess make them world-famous mercenaries; the Kumyk, whose nascent nationalist movement is the first in the former Soviet Union to be spearheaded by women; the Laks, whose banishment to the lowlands by the Bolsheviks in 1920 nearly destroyed them as a nation; and of course the Chechens, whose armed resistance to Russian rule has reduced their cities to rubble and yanked the Caucasus from international obscurity. Karny muddies his portrait with a self-conscious attempt to connect with his subjects, calling his book a "quest of memory" (as the descendant of Polish Jews, Karny feels he was subjected to memory desensitization by Israeli propaganda). But, fortunately, his philosophical ponderings are overshadowed by his scrupulous journalism and passionate plea that these endangered nations be helped to survive the 21st century's globalization.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Israeli journalist Karny has made several visits to the Caucasus, that mountainous tangle of conflicting ethnic groups that lies between the Caspian and Black seas. This is the land of the Kabardins, Chechens, Cossacks, Georgians, Daghesjanis, Armenisans, Azerbijans, and others. With the break-up of the Soviet Union, this transition area between Christian Europe and the Muslim Middle East has been disintegrating into chaos and tragedy. The book, which the author completed in the fall of 1999 when the Russian-Chechen conflict was again heating up, provides considerable background of a region that is important to world stability but poorly understood and overlooked. Unfortunately for us all, Karny can offer little hope. The bibliographic essay provides a number of web sites for those wanting to keep up with the changes taking place. Most libraries should purchase this book.

Library Journal