Sophie Pinkham – författare

‘A towering achievement’ MERVE EMRE NYT Best New Books of 2026 A majestic cultural and environmental history that reveals how forests have made – and resisted – Russia’s many empires. From the Baltic to the Pacific, from the Arctic to the Steppes of Central Asia, Russia’s forests account for nearly one-fifth of the world’s wooded lands. The Oak and the Larch is the first-ever English-language exploration of this vast expanse – a dazzling environmental history of Russia that offers an urgent new understanding of the nature of Russian power, and of Russia’s ideas of itself.Inspired by the majestic oak, which towers over the country’s western heartland, and the hardy Siberian larch, an emblem of survival in the east, award winning scholar Sophie Pinkham’s magisterial account spans centuries, revealing how forests have nourished ancient Siberian Indigenous societies, defended medieval Slavic settlements from Mongol invasion and served as both an essential natural resource and a potent cultural symbol for Russia in all its incarnations, from the days of the tsars to the Soviets to Putin’s Federation.By examining the country from the forest’s perspective, Pinkham pushes far beyond the contemporary political environment in Russia. She draws on literature, history and art to connect the expanse of the Russian wilderness and the nature of Russian culture, with indelible portraits of the diverse figures who have inhabited and celebrated these forests: the legendary Indigenous guide Dersu Uzala, giants of literature like Tolstoy and Chekhov, political thinkers like Kropotkin and even Stalin. She confronts the forest’s role in Russia’s long history of imperial conquest, and in resistance to this conquest.Gorgeously written and surprising at every turn, The Oak and the Larch offers a vision of Russia rarely seen in the West, as a land defined by its wilderness, shaped by its encounters with the frontier, and – much like our own – ultimately beholden to nature’s whim.

‘A towering achievement’ MERVE EMRE NYT Best New Books of 2026 A majestic cultural and environmental history that reveals how forests have made – and resisted – Russia’s many empires. From the Baltic to the Pacific, from the Arctic to the Steppes of Central Asia, Russia’s forests account for nearly one-fifth of the world’s wooded lands. The Oak and the Larch is the first-ever English-language exploration of this vast expanse – a dazzling environmental history of Russia that offers an urgent new understanding of the nature of Russian power, and of Russia’s ideas of itself.Inspired by the majestic oak, which towers over the country’s western heartland, and the hardy Siberian larch, an emblem of survival in the east, award winning scholar Sophie Pinkham’s magisterial account spans centuries, revealing how forests have nourished ancient Siberian Indigenous societies, defended medieval Slavic settlements from Mongol invasion and served as both an essential natural resource and a potent cultural symbol for Russia in all its incarnations, from the days of the tsars to the Soviets to Putin’s Federation.By examining the country from the forest’s perspective, Pinkham pushes far beyond the contemporary political environment in Russia. She draws on literature, history and art to connect the expanse of the Russian wilderness and the nature of Russian culture, with indelible portraits of the diverse figures who have inhabited and celebrated these forests: the legendary Indigenous guide Dersu Uzala, giants of literature like Tolstoy and Chekhov, political thinkers like Kropotkin and even Stalin. She confronts the forest’s role in Russia’s long history of imperial conquest, and in resistance to this conquest.Gorgeously written and surprising at every turn, The Oak and the Larch offers a vision of Russia rarely seen in the West, as a land defined by its wilderness, shaped by its encounters with the frontier, and – much like our own – ultimately beholden to nature’s whim.

'Lively and engaging' Financial Times'Empathetic and deeply humanising' Peter Pomerantsev, author of This is Not PropagandaEach time Ukraine has rebuilt itself over the last century, it has been plagued by the same conflicts: corruption, poverty, and most of all Russian aggression. Sophie Pinkham saw all this and more over ten years in Ukraine and Russia, a period that included the Maidan revolution of 2013-14, Russia's annexation of Crimea, and the ensuing war in Donbass. With a keen eye for the dark absurdities of post-Soviet society, Pinkham presents a dynamic account of contemporary Ukrainian life. She meet a charismatic doctor helping to smooth the transition to democracy even as he struggles with drug dependence; a band of Ukrainian, Russian, and Belarusian hippies in a Crimean idyll; and a Jewish clarinetist agitating for Ukrainian liberation. These fascinating personalities deliver an indelible impression of a country on the brink.Black Square is necessary reading for anyone who wishes to learn the roots of the current Russo-Ukrainian war and the personal stories of the people who live it every day.___'Elegant, suggestive, ominous, beautiful, and deceptively simple . . . Perhaps the only thing more impressive than the sheer number and diversity of people Sophie Pinkham has spoken to is how deftly she has woven their stories into a single compulsively readable narrative.' Elif Batuman, author of The Idiot