2026-03-11
30 分钟Hello and welcome to Meet the Writers, I'm Georgina Godwin.
There are parts of Europe that sit comfortably on the map.
Paris is west, Moscow is east, Rome does what Rome pleases.
And then there's this other place, a region of vanished monarchies, layered loyalties,
borderlands that moved more than the people did,
and cafes where entire empires once dissolved over coffee.
Call it myth, memory, longing, or just a very complicated geography.
But the idea of central Europe has always shimmered slightly out of focus,
like a civilisation glimpsed through on a winter window in Vienna or Krakow.
It's a place that existed spectacularly, disappearing catastrophically,
and yet continues stubbornly to haunt politics, literature and, increasingly, headlines.
My guest today has spent years navigating that liminal space between past and present.
He's a journalist and a historian whose work has appeared in The Atlantic,
The Financial Times, History Today and many others,
with a special focus on Central and Eastern Europe,
Russia and the shifting tectonics of power in the region.
His book, Central Europe, The Death of a Civilisation and the Life of an Idea, explores the birth,
death and rebirth of the region, forming in the 18th century and being shattered by two world wars.
Luka Ivan Ucic.
Welcome to Meet the Writers.