Courland is an entity that no longer exists. With the Gulf of Riga to the north, the Baltic to the west and Lithuania at its southern border, and now part of modern Latvia, the region was occupied by Nazi Germany and returned to Soviet Russia after the war, remaining largely inaccessible until 1991. It is now a nowhere land of wide skies and forests, deserted beaches, ruined castles and ex-KGB prisons. For years Jean-Paul Kauffmann has been irresistibly drawn to this buffer between the Germanic and Slav worlds. His digressive travels at the wheel of a Skoda become an investigation into the whereabouts of a former lover, a search for an excavator of tombs, and a journey in the footsteps of Louis XVIII, for whom Courland was once a place of exile.

'Curiously engaging and even tantalising book ... this book is something of a tour de force' Spectator.

Courland is an entity that no longer exists. With the Gulf of Riga to the north, the Baltic to the west and Lithuania at its southern border, and now part of modern Latvia, the region was by occupied by Nazi Germany and returned to Soviet Russia after the war, remaining largely inaccessible until 1991. Once ruled by descendants of the Teutonic Knights, it is now a nowhere land of wide skies and forests, deserted beaches, ruined castles and ex-KGB prisons. For years Jean-Paul Kauffmann has been irresistibly drawn to this place, the buffer between the Germanic and Slav worlds. His digressive travels at the wheel of a Skoda become an investigation into the whereabouts of a former lover, a search for an excavator of tombs, and he follows in the footsteps of Louis XVIII, for whom Courland was once a place of exile. Author of Voyage to Desolation Island and The Dark Room at Longwood - 'a remarkable book which defies classification' (New Statesman), which won six prizes on its publication in France - Kauffmann has come to be known as an erudite and witty observer of the world's most desolate reaches.

A la mani re des r cits picaresques, l'auteur livre ses p r grinations dans une province de Lettonie, coinc e entre la mer Baltique et le golfe de Riga, jadis duch vassal de Pologne, puis annex e par la Russie, occup e ensuite par les nazis avant d' tre conquise par l'Arm e rouge. Aujourd'hui, elle n'a plus d'existence propre . C'est un pays de nulle part, peupl de carcasses rouill es, de ruines et de plages d sertes . Ce road movie baltique au volant d'une Skoda rouge permet de croiser des personnages atypiques mais aussi d' voquer l'ombre de Mara, que l'auteur a aim e il y a trente ans... Un beau livre m lancolique sur la d rive des sentiments et la travers e des apparences.