Evan Gershkovich's Book on His Russian Imprisonment Is Reviewed by the Guardian

Evan Gershkovich, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, has written a book about the year and a half he spent in Russian jails. The Guardian published its review of the book, This Cursed Beautiful Land, on 13 November 2026.

Russian authorities detained Gershkovich on espionage charges, which means accusations of spying, during the early phase of Russia's war in Ukraine. He was held in two prisons, Lefortovo and Yekaterinburg. He was released in a prisoner exchange in 2024, a deal in which people held by each side are freed in return for others.

The book opens with his arrest. In it, he recounts a meeting with a contact who promised information about Russia's military-industrial preparations, meaning the factories and supply chains that feed the country's war effort. That meeting, he describes, was a sting: a set-up designed to catch him in the act.

His path to that moment began far from Moscow. Gershkovich was born in the United States to Russian Jewish immigrant parents and grew up in suburban New Jersey. Early in his career he worked nights as an editorial assistant at the New York Times, a job that keeps a newsroom running behind the scenes. He later became a reporter at The Moscow Times, where he covered Russia.

The book is the first long account from Gershkovich himself of what happened after that meeting. Its title and subject put it in a small but growing shelf of works by journalists who were jailed abroad and later wrote about it. Readers who want his own account of the arrest, the prisons and the exchange will find it in the book. For a critic's view of how well it tells that story, the Guardian review is the place to look.