SOURCE: Pool, Gail. Review of Where Nights Are Longest, by Colin Thubron. Christian Science Monitor 79, no. 199 (8 September 1987): 21-2

In the following excerpt, Pool notes that Where Nights Are Longest does not present a flattering portrait of the Soviet Union.

“Nobody from the West enters the Soviet Union without prejudice,” says Colin Thubron at the start of Where Nights Are Longest. “But I think I wanted to know and embrace this enemy I had inherited.”

To a large degree, Thubron's journey through Russia is an exploration of attitudes, the Soviets' and his own. It would be nice to report that he discovered that his negative bias was without foundation. But this was not the case. Indeed, neither his book nor Peregrine Hodson's account of a journey through Soviet-occupied Afghanistan—two outstanding entries in the new Atlantic Monthly Traveler series—is likely to endear Soviet power to Western readers.

Thubron...